I haven't said anything all this time about Jenny Hobbs, but she was a person of great importance to me just then. She was a dancer--we had quite a respectable ballet troupe with us that year. She wasn't the _première danseuse_, but she stood in the front row, and figured in the bills as Mlle. Celestine Buzac de la Montigny. Sam Stacker himself invented that name. He said it sounded fine. It certainly did. She had come to him one morning just before we started on the road and had asked for work. She was a modest little thing, like a plenty of other ballet girls I know; and I found out afterward she supported her bedridden sister and took care of her little brother out of her small wages. Sam was in a hurry, and told her I was his representative--a great way he had when he didn't want to be troubled with people; so I put Miss Jenny Hobbs through her paces, and saw she was a pretty good little dancer. We had as the _première danseuse_ Mlle. Dagmar--I don't know what her name in private life was. She was a fine dancer, but a stupid creature, without any invention, and couldn't do anything she hadn't been taught; and in a company like ours, we wanted somebody who was equal to emergencies, which Dag--we called her that for short--wasn't. Jenny Hobbs was just that. She turned out a trump. Of course we couldn't bring her forward over Dag's nose, nor have her name very prominently billed; but she didn't seem to mind that, so long as she got an increase of wages, and something for her little brother to do along with the company; and she was worth all she got, and more too. She never put herself forward, but when Dagmar was ill, which at first was about twice a week regularly, she took her place, and did almost as well--so well in fact that it acted on Dag as the advertisements say Hop Bitters acts--it cured her right off of several chronic complaints of long standing, and from being ill half her time (though nobody would have suspected it from her robust appearance) she got able to dance six nights and two afternoons in the week the whole season, and never gave Jenny Hobbs another chance to take her place. Then Jenny used to suggest little alterations and improvements in the performance that Dagmar listened to readily enough, as it always brought her bouquets and applause, and Jenny actually made her think that Dagmar originated them herself.