lp the war. You
have strode in upon my department for once, Mary Gilligan, and I'm going
to put you out! You don't know where to economize and I do. No more
eating out, and a good sensible table at home, minus cream cakes," she
says, "is what we do from now on!"

And with that she marches out leaving me flat as one of her own
pan-cakes. Well, this was bad enough, but when Musette got after me as I
was dressing to go for my five miles, I seen that my humbling for the
day was not finished.

"That dress Madam bought yesterday," she began.

"You can have it!" I said, beating her to it, or so I thought.

"Thank you, I do not care for it," says Musette. "I was just remarking
it is really not fit to wear again. Madam would of done better to pay a
little more!"

Can you beat it? You can not! Two falls from one pride! Believe you me I
took _some_ walk that afternoon, and if I had wore a speedomiter I bet
it would have registered a lot over five miles. And while I was walking
I kept getting madder and madder and more and more worked up over what
boneheads people was and how was a person to economize nowadays and how
on earth would I sell all them stamps by Saturday night with a matinee
in between and keep my promise to President Wilson? It begun to look
like I was going to have to become one of them sidewalk pests. I got a
real good picture of myself going up to the proud or pesky passer-by,
and getting turned down so often that my spirit was bent thinking of it.

But--believe you me--I made up my mind that if I had to hold up anybody
to make them invest in the World's Soundest Securities or W.S.S. I would
hold them up good and plenty and no disguise about it. I thought again
about my revolver, the one which I had used it in the movies when I done
"The Dancer's Downfall" for them and kept it for a souvenir. I was that
wrought up over the situation that by the time I got home I had pretty
near decided I'd take that fire-arm to the theatre and lock the doors
and come down front center and shoot out one of the lights to show I
meant it and then take the money right off the audience. The theatre
being my native element it seemed only natural to pull the trick there,
only being a lady the gun really did look a little rough only not more
so than the public deserved.

V

WELL, anyways, I was certainly up against it with all them blanks still
on my hands and no way in sight of getting rid of them. And just to make
things nice