Miss Blossom De Voe, pinkest of satin drummer boys, withdrew an affronted elbow, the corners of her mouth quivering slightly, possibly of their own richness. They were dewy, fruit-like lips, as if Nature were smiling with them at her own handiwork. "Say, somebody around here better look where he's going or mama's khaki-boy will be calling for an arnica high-ball. What does he think I yam, the six o'clock subway rush?" Miss Elaine Vavasour wound down the spiral ahead of Miss De Voe, the pink satin blouse already in the removing. "Go suck a quince Blos. It's good for crazy bone and fallen arch." "If you was any funnier, Elaine, you'd float," said Miss De Voe withdrawing a hair pin as she wound downward, an immediate avalanche of springy curls released. Beneath the stage of the Gotham Theater a corridor of dressing rooms ran the musty subterranean length of the sub cellar. A gaseous gloomy dampness here; this cave of the purple lidded, so far below the level of reality. At the door of Miss De Voe's eight by ten, shared by four, dressing room, one of the back drop of privates, erect, squarebacked, head thrown up by the deep-dipping cap vizor, emerged at sight of her, lifted hat revealing a great permanent wave of hair that could only be born not bought. "H'lo, Hal." "Hello, Blossum." "Whose hot water bottle did you come to borrow?" "Hot water bottle?" "Yeh, you look like you got the double pneumonia and each one of the pneumonia's got the tooth ache. Who stole your kite, ikkie boy?" Mr. Hal Sanderson flung up a fine impatient head, the permanent hair-wave lifting, "We'll can the comedy, Blossum," he said. She lowered to a mock curtsey, mouth skewed to control laughter, arms akimbo. "We will now sing psalm twenty-three." "Come to supper with me, Blos? You been dodging me pretty steady here lately." She clapped her hand to her brow, plastering a curl there. "Migaw, I am now in the act of dropping thirty cents and ten cents tip into my Pig Bank. Will I go to supper with him? Say, darling, will the Hudson flow by Grant's monument to-night at twelve? On a Saturday matinée he asks me to supper with a question mark." "Honest, Bloss, you'd hand a fellow a ha ha if he invited you to his funeral." She sobered at that, leaning against the cold plastered wall, winding one of the shining curls about her fore finger. "What's the matter--Hal?" He handed her a torn newspaper sheet, blue penciled. She took it but did not glance down. "Drafted?" "Yes," he said. The voice of a soubrette trilling snatches of her topical song as she creamed off her make-up, came to them through the sulky gloom of the corridor. Behind the closed door of Miss De Voe's dressing room, the gabble of the pink satin ponies was like hash in the chopping. Overhead, moving scenery created a remote sort of thunder. She stood looking up at him, her young mouth parted. "I--oh, Hal--well--well, whatta you know about that--Hal Sanderson--drafted."