The Little Warrior Part 34

"I thought so from the accent," said Mr Brown. "So our talk sort of goes over the top, does it? Well, you'll learn American soon, if you stick around."

"I've learned some already," said Jill. The relief of meeting Nelly had made her feel very happy. She liked this smooth-haired young man.

"A man on the train this morning said to me, 'Would you care for the morning paper, sister?' I said, 'No, thanks, brother, I want to look out of the window and think!'"

"You meet a lot of fresh guys on trains," commented Mr Brown austerely. "You want to give 'em the cold-storage eye." He turned to Nelly. "Did you go down to Ike, as I told you?"

"Yes."

"Did you cop?"

"Yes. I never felt so happy in my life. I'd waited over an hour on that landing of theirs, and then Johnny Miller came along, and I yelled in his ear that I was after work, and he told me it would be all right. He's awfully good to girls who've worked in shows for him before. If it hadn't been for him I might have been waiting there still."

"Who," enquired Jill, anxious to be abreast of the conversation, "is Ike?"

"Mr Goble. Where I've just got work. Goble and Cohn, you know."

"I never heard of them!"

The young man extended his hand.

"Put it there!" he said. "They never heard of me! At least, the fellow I saw when I went down to the office hadn't! Can you beat it?"

"Oh, did you go down there, too?" asked Nelly.

"Sure. Joe wanted to get in another show on Broadway. He'd sort of got tired of vodevil. Say, I don't want to scare you, Nelly, but, if you ask me, that show they're putting out down there is a citron! I don't think Ike's got a cent of his own money in it. My belief is that he's running it for a lot of amateurs. Why, say, listen! Joe and I blow in there to see if there's anything for us, and there's a tall guy in tortoisesh.e.l.l cheaters sitting in Ike's office. Said he was the author and was engaging the princ.i.p.als. We told him who we were, and it didn't make any hit with him at all. He said he had never heard of us. And, when we explained, he said no, there wasn't going to be any of our sort of work in the show. Said he was making an effort to give the public something rather better than the usual sort of thing. No specialties required. He said it was an effort to restore the Gilbert and Sullivan tradition. Say, who are these Gilbert and Sullivan guys, anyway? They get written up in the papers all the time, and I never met any one who'd run across them. If you want my opinion, that show down there is a comic opera!"

"For heaven's sake!" Nelly had the musical comedy performer's horror of the older-established form of entertainment. "Why, comic opera died in the year one!"

"Well, these guys are going to dig it up. That's the way it looks to me." He lowered his voice. "Say, I saw Clarice last night," he said in a confidential undertone. "It's all right."

"It is?"

"We've made it up. It was like this ..."

His conversation took an intimate turn. He expounded for Nelly's benefit the inner history, with all its ramifications, of a recent unfortunate rift between himself and "the best little girl in Flatbush,"--what he had said, what she had said, what her sister had said, and how it all come right in the end. Jill might have felt a little excluded, but for the fact that a sudden and exciting idea had come to her. She sat back, thinking... . After all, what else was she to do? She must do something... .

She bent forward and interrupted Mr Brown in his description of a brisk pa.s.sage of arms between himself and the best little girl's sister, who seemed to be an unpleasant sort of person in every way.

"Mr Brown."

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Do you think there would be any chance for me if I asked for work at Goble and Cohn's?"

"You're joking!" cried Nelly.

"I'm not at all."

"But what do you want with work?"

"I've got to find some. And right away, too."

"I don't understand."

Jill hesitated. She disliked discussing her private affairs, but there was obviously no way of avoiding it. Nelly was round-eyed and mystified, and Mr Brown had manifestly no intention whatever of withdrawing tactfully. He wanted to hear all.

"I've lost my money," said Jill.

"Lost your money! Do you mean ... ?"

"I've lost it all. Every penny I had in the world."

"Tough!" interpolated Mr Brown judicially. "I broke once way out in a tank-town in Oklahoma. The manager skipped with our salaries. Last we saw of him he was doing the trip to Canada in nothing flat."

"But how?" gasped Nelly.

"It happened about the time we met in London. Do you remember Freddie Rooke, who was at our house that after-noon?"

A dreamy look came into Nelly's eyes. There had not been an hour since their parting when she had not thought of that immaculate sportsman. It would have amazed Freddie, could he have known, but to Nelly Bryant he was the one perfect man in an imperfect world.

"Do I!" she sighed ecstatically.

Mr Brown shot a keen glance at her.

"Aha!" he cried facetiously. "Who is he, Nelly? Who is this blue-eyed boy?"

"If you want to know," said Nelly, defiance in her tone, "he's the fellow who gave me fifty pounds, with no strings tied to it,--get that!--when I was broke in London! If it hadn't been for him, I'd be there still."

"Did he?" cried Jill. "Freddie!"

"Yes. Oh, Gee!" Nelly sighed once more. "I suppose I'll never see him again in this world."

"Introduce me to him, if you do," said Mr Brown. "He sounds just the sort of little pal I'd like to have!"

"You remember hearing Freddie say something about losing money in a slump on the Stock Exchange," proceeded Jill. "Well, that was how I lost mine. It's a long story, and it's not worth talking about, but that's how things stand, and I've got to find work of some sort, and it looks to me as if I should have a better chance of finding it on the stage than anywhere else."

"I'm terribly sorry."

"Oh, it's all right. How much would these people Goble and Cohn give me if I got an engagement?"

"Only forty a week."

"Forty dollars a week! It's wealth! Where are they?"

"Over at the Gotham Theatre in Forty-second Street."

"I'll go there at once."

"But you'll hate it. You don't realize what it's like. You wait hours and hours and n.o.body sees you."