ella's portal, and enter
on the wings of the morning and a pair of white-topped, French-heeled
shoes Miss Ysobel Du Prez, late of the third road company of the
Broadway success, "Oh, Oh, Marietta!" and with a history in pony ballets
that entitled her to a pedigree and honorable mention.

"Girl, ain't you dressed yet? What you doin'? Waitin' for your French
maid to get your French lawngerie from the French laundry?"

Miss Du Prez swung herself atop the trunk and crossed her slim limbs.
Chatelaine jewelry jangled; Herculean perfume dominated the air, and
that expressive sobriquet for soubrette, a fourteen-inch willow-plume,
and long as the tail of a male pheasant, brushed her left shoulder.

Miss Ysobel Du Prez--one of the ornamental line of tottering caryatids
who uphold on their narrow, whitewashed shoulders the gold-paper thrones
of musical-comedy principalities, and on those same shoulders carry
every tradition of that section of Broadway which Thespis occupies on a
ninety-nine-year, privilege-of-renewal lease--the fumes of grease-paint
the incense of her temple, the footlights the white flame of her
sacrifice!

"You gotta do a quick change if you're going to the offices with me
to-day, girl. I gotta be up at the Empire in the Putney Building by
eleven and stop in at the Bijou first."

Delia shed her comfortable shroud of repose like Thais dropping her
mantle in an Alexandrian theater.

"I must 'a' overslept, Ysobel. Trying on them duds we bought yesterday
up to so late last night done me up. Three days in New York ain't got me
used to the pace."

"You should worry! If I had your face and figure I'd sleep till the
call-boy rapped twice."

"Ah, Ysobel, you with your cute little face and cute little ways!"

"Soft pedal on the ingenoo stuff, girl. You know you don't hate
yourself. I didn't notice that you exactly despised anything about you
when they called the floor-walker to have a look at you in that black
dress yesterday."

"Honest, Ysobel, I dreamt about it all night."

"Sure you did! But who was it steered you into a 'slightly used,' classy
place where you could buy a gown that Mrs. Asterbilt wore once to a
reception at the Sultan of Sulu's or the Prince of Pilsen's or any of
that crowd; who steered you in a place where you could buy a real gown
for one-tenth the cost of production?"

"You did, Ysobel. I don't know what I'd 'a' done if Mrs. Fallows hadn't
brought you up."

"That little black dream