e kept his head, Lord Harold did--even if it is a mutton-head. That
helped me at first. He was so cold, so stupid, so slow, so
good-tempered--so just himself. And after the first plunge--

I tell you, Mag Monahan, there's one thing that's stronger than wine to
a woman--it's being beautiful. Oh! And I was beautiful. I knew it
before I got that quick hush, with the full applause after it. And
because I was beautiful, I got saucy, and then calm, and then I caught
Fred Obermuller's voice--he had taken the book from the prompter and
stood there himself--and after that it was easy sailing.

He was there yet when the act was over, and I trailed out, followed by
my Lord. He let the prompt-book fall from his hands and reached them
both out to me.

I flirted my jeweled fan at him and swept him a courtesy.

Cool? No, I wasn't. Not a bit of it. He was daffy with the sight of
me in all that glory, and I knew it.

"Nance," he whispered, "you wonderful girl, if I didn't know about that
little thief up at the Bronsonia I'd--I'd marry you alive, just for the
fun of piling pretty things on you."

"The deuce you would!" I sailed past him, with Topham and my Lord in
my wake.

They didn't leave me till they'd stripped me clean. I felt like a
Christmas tree the day after. But, somehow, I didn't care.

VIII.

Is that you, Mag? Well, it's about time you came home to look after
me. Fine chaperon you make, Miss Monahan! Why, didn't I tell you the
very day we took this flat what a chaperon was, and that you'd have to
be mine? Imagine Nancy Olden without a chaperon--Shocking!

No, 'tisn't late. Sit down, Maggie, there, and let me get the stool
and talk to you. Think of us two--Cruelty girls, both of us--two mangy
kittens deserted by the old cats in a city's alleys, and left mewing
with cold and hunger and dirt, out in the wet--think of us two in our
own flat, Mag!

I say, it makes me proud of us! There are times when I look at every
stick of furniture we own, and I try to pretend to it all that I'm used
to a decent roof over my head, and a dining-room, kitchen, parlor,
bedroom and bath. Oh, and I forgot the telephone the other tenant left
here till its lease is up. But at other times I stand here in the
middle of it and cry out to it, in my heart:

"Look at me, Nancy Olden, a householder, a rent-payer, the head of the
family, even if it's only a family of two and the other one Mag! Look
at me, with my name