“We're a team. My side partner's a man. It pays better that way. We get $40 a week and transportation. I used to get only $12 except when I stood around and posed, then I got $35 and had to pay my own railroad fare. You can bet I have a good figure, when I get $35 for that alone! I handle the money of the team and I divide it even between us. I don't believe in the man getting nine-tenths of the stuff, do you? Besides, I'm older than my partner is. I put him in the business.” “How was that?” “Oh, I picked him up on the street in New York. I saw that he had a good voice and was a bright kid, so I took him for my partner.” “But tell me how it came about.” She was quite willing to do so. And the rumbling of the wheels, the rush of the train over the night-swathed plains of New Jersey, accompanied her voice. All the other passengers were sleeping. To the following effect was her narrative: At evening a crowd of boys had gathered at the corner of Broadway and a down-town street. One of them--ragged, unkempt, but handsome--was singing and dancing for the diversion of the others. That way came the variety actress, then out of an engagement. She stopped, heard the boy sing, and saw him dance. She pushed through the crowd to him. “How did you learn to dance?” she asked. “Didn't ever learn,” he said, with impudent sullenness. “Who taught you to sing?” “None o' yer business.” “But who did teach you?” “Nobody.” “What's your name?” “None of your business.” “Will you come along with me into the restaurant over there?” “No.” But presently he was induced to go, although he continued to answer her questions in the savage, distrustful manner of his class. They went into a cheap eating-house and saloon, through the “Ladies' Entrance,” and while they sat at a table there, she learned by means of resolute and patient questions that the boy earned his living by blacking shoes now and then, and that he did not know who his parents were, as he had been “put” with a family whose ill-usage he had fled from to live in the street. He began to melt under her manifestations of interest in him, and with pretended reluctance he gave his promise to wash his face and hands and to call upon her that evening at the theatrical boarding-house on Twenty-seventh Street where she was living. Then she left him. When he called, she took him to her room and induced him to allow her to comb his hair. A deal of persuasion was necessary to this. Then she took him out and bought him a cheap suit of clothes on the Bowery. A half-hour later he was standing with her in the wings at Miner's Variety Theatre. A man and woman were doing a song and dance upon the stage. “Watch that man,” the actress said to the boy of the streets. “I want you to do that sort of an act with me one of these days.”