Nance, poring over every detail of the photograph, held her own counsel. She was thinking of the night she had stood in the drug-store door, and he had kept the motor waiting while he smiled at her over his shoulder. That was a smile that remembered! "You want to be careful what you say to anybody," Birdie continued, "there ain't any use airing it around where you live, or what you been doing. There ain't a girl in the chorus knows my real name, or where I come from." The allusion to home stirred Nance's conscience, and reminded her that over there beyond the cathedral spire, dimly visible from the window, lay a certain little alley which still had claims upon her. "I ain't said a thing to 'em at home about this," she said. "Suppose they don't let me do it?" "Let nothing!" said Birdie. "Write a note to Mrs. Snawdor, and tell her you are spending the night down-town with me. You'll know by morning whether Reeser is going to take you on or not. If he does, you just want to announce the fact that you are going, and go." Nance looked at her with kindling eyes. This high-handed method appealed to her. After all wasn't she past eighteen? Birdie hadn't been that old when she struck out for herself. "What about Miss Bobinet?" she asked ruefully. "The wiggy old party up in Cemetery Street? Let her go hang. You've swallowed her frizzes long enough." Nance laughed and gave the older girl's arm a rapturous squeeze. "And you think maybe Mr. Reeser'll take me on?" she asked for the sixteenth time. "Well, Flossie Pierson has been shipped home, and they've got to put somebody in her place. It's no cinch to pick up a girl on the road, just the right size, who can dance even as good as you can. If Reeser engages you, it's fifteen per for the rest of the season, and a good chance for next." "All right, here goes!" cried Nance, recklessly, seizing paper and pen. When the hard rolls and strong tea which composed their lunch had been disposed of, Nance curled herself luxuriously on the foot of the bed and munched chocolate creams, while Birdie, in a soiled pink kimono that displayed her round white arms and shapely throat, lay stretched beside her. They found a great deal to talk about, and still more to laugh about. Nance loved to laugh; all she wanted was an excuse, and everything was an excuse to-day; Birdie's tales of stage-door Johnnies, the recent ire of old Spagetti, her own imitation of Miss Bobinet and the ossified Susan. Nance loved the cozy intimacy of the little room; even the heavy odor of perfumes and cosmetics was strange and fascinating; she thought Birdie was the prettiest girl she had ever seen. A thrilling vista of days like this, spent with her in strange and wonderful cities, opened before her. "I'll rig you up in some of my clothes, until you get your first pay," Birdie offered, "then we can fit you out right and proper. You got the making of an awful pretty girl in you."