She had been a soubrette in musical farce, but
lately she had belonged to a variety and burlesque company. She had gone
upon the stage when she was thirteen, and she was now twenty.
"What kind of an act do you do?" I asked, in the language of the variety
"profession."
"Oh, I can do almost anything," she said, in a tone of a self-possessed,
careless, and vivacious woman. "I sing well enough, and I can dance
anything, a skirt dance, a clog, a Mexican fandango, a Carmencita kind of
step, anything at all. I don't know when I ever learned to dance. I didn't
learn, it just came to me; but the best thing I do is whistling. I'm not
afraid of any man in the business when it's a case of whistling. There's no
fake about my whistle; it's the real thing. I can whistle any sort of music
that goes."
"Your company appears in Baltimore this week?"
"Oh, no! I've left the company. You see, I've been off for six weeks on
account of illness, and now I'm going over to Baltimore to my father's
funeral. He is to be buried to-morrow. See, here's the telegram. I've been
having hard lines lately. I've not had any sleep for three days, and I
won't get to Baltimore till daylight.
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