ospital cot that day.

The interest of the press and the public approval of the National
Irish Players had not proved sufficient to propitiate that
iron-hearted monster, Financial Success. The company went into
bankruptcy before they had played half their bookings. Their final
curtain went down on a bit of serio-comic drama staged, impromptu, on
a North River dock, with barely enough cash in hand to pay the
company's home passage. On this occasion Patsy had missed her cue for
the first time. She had been left in the wings, so to speak; and that
night she filled the only vacant bed in the women's free ward of the
City Hospital.

It was pneumonia. Patsy had tossed about and moaned with the racking
pain of it, raving deliriously through her score or more of roles.
She had gone dancing off with the Faery Child to the Land of Heart's
Desire; she had sat beside the bier in "The Riders to the Sea"; she
had laughed through "The Full o' Moon," and played the Fool while the
Wise Man died. The nurses and doctors had listened with open-eyed
wonder and secret enjoyment; she had allowed them to peep into a new
world too full of charm and lure to be denied; and then of a sudden
she had settled down to a silent, grim tussle with the "Gray
Brother."

This was all weeks past. It was early June now; the theatrical season
was closed for two months, with no prospects in the booking agencies
until August. In the mean time she had eight dollars, seventy-six
cents, and a crooked sixpence as available collateral; and an unpaid
board bill.

Patsy felt sorry for Miss Gibb, but she felt no shame. Boarding-house
keepers, dressmakers, bootmakers, and the like must take the risk
along with the players themselves in the matter of getting paid for
their services. If the public--who paid two dollars a seat for a
performance--failed to appear, and box-office receipts failed to
margin their salaries, it was their misfortune, not their fault; and
others had to suffer along with them. But these debts of circumstance
never troubled Patsy. She paid them when she could, and when she
could not--there was always her trunk.

The City Hospital happened to know the extent of Patsy's property; it
is their business to find out these little private matters
concerning their free patients. They had also drawn certain
conclusions from the facts that no one had come to see Patsy and that
no communications had reached her from anywhere. It looked to them as
if Pats