came in.

Somebody else said it was fierce, and a third girl declared it to be
the limit. A fourth girl, well-meaning but less helpful than she would
have liked to be, was advising the victim not to worry.

The story of the disaster was brief and easily told. The Duchess,
sailing in at the stage-door, had paused at the letterbox to see if
Cuthbert, her faithful auto-salesman, had sent her a good-luck
telegram. He had, but his good wishes were unfortunately neutralized
by the fact that the very next letter in the box was one from the
management, crisp and to the point, informing the Duchess that her
services would not be required that night or thereafter. It was the
subtle meanness of the blow that roused the indignation of "The Rose
of America" chorus, the cunning villainy with which it had been timed.

"Poor Mae, if she'd opened to-night, they'd have had to give her two
weeks' notice or her salary. But they can fire her without a cent just
because she's only been rehearsing and hasn't given a show!"

The Duchess burst into fresh flood of tears.

"Don't you worry, honey!" advised the well-meaning girl who would have
been in her element looking in on Job with Bildad the Shuhite and his
friends. "Don't you worry!"

"It's tough!" said the girl who had adopted that form of verbal
consolation.

"It's fierce!" said the girl who preferred that adjective.

The other girl, with an air of saying something new, repeated her
statement that it was the limit. The Duchess cried forlornly
throughout. She had needed this engagement badly. Chorus salaries are
not stupendous, but it is possible to save money by means of them
during a New York run, especially if you have spent three years in a
milliner's shop and can make your own clothes, as the Duchess, in
spite of her air of being turned out by Fifth Avenue modistes, could
and did. She had been looking forward, now that this absurd piece was
to be rewritten by someone who knew his business and had a good chance
of success, to putting by just those few dollars that make all the
difference when you are embarking on married life. Cuthbert, for all
his faithfulness, could not hold up the financial end of the
establishment unsupported for at least another eighteen months; and
this disaster meant that the wedding would have to be postponed again.
So the Duchess, abandoning that aristocratic manner criticized by some
of her colleagues as "up-stage" and by others as "Ritz-y," sat in he