nly eighteen bows second house
Saturday!"

Jill was listening, fascinated.

"I can't understand a word," she said. "It's like another language."

"You're from the other side, aren't you?" asked Mr. Brown.

"She only landed a week ago," said Nelly.

"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
tortoise-shell cheaters sitting in Ike's office. Said he was the
author and was engaging the principals. 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