“Don't talk just yet, or I shall never get this thing straight. Well, you know Fillmore, poor darling. Anyone else would have pulled in his horns and gone slow for a spell, but he's one of those fellows whose horse is always going to win the next race. The big killing is always just round the corner with him. Funny how you can see what a chump a man is and yet love him to death... I remember saying something like that to you before... He thought he could get it all back by staging this fight of his that came off in Jersey City last night. And if everything had gone right he might have got afloat again. But it seems as if he can't touch anything without it turning to mud. On the very day before the fight was to come off, the poor mutt who was going against the champion goes and lets a sparring-partner of his own knock him down and fool around with him. With all the newspaper men there too! You probably saw about it in the papers. It made a great story for them. Well, that killed the whole thing. The public had never been any too sure that this fellow Bugs Butler had a chance of putting up a scrap with the champion that would be worth paying to see; and, when they read that he couldn't even stop his sparring-partners slamming him all around the place they simply decided to stay away. Poor old Fill! It was a finisher for him. The house wasn't a quarter full, and after he'd paid these two pluguglies their guarantees, which they insisted on having before they'd so much as go into the ring, he was just about cleaned out. So there you are!” Sally had listened with dismay to this catalogue of misfortunes. “Oh, poor Fill!” she cried. “How dreadful!” “Pretty tough.” “But 'The Primrose Way' is a big success, isn't it?” said Sally, anxious to discover something of brightness in the situation. “It was.” Mrs. Fillmore flushed again. “This is the part I hate having to tell you.” “It was? Do you mean it isn't still? I thought Elsa had made such a tremendous hit. I read about it when I was over in London. It was even in one of the English papers.” “Yes, she made a hit all right,” said Mrs. Fillmore drily. “She made such a hit that all the other managements in New York were after her right away, and Fillmore had hardly sailed when she handed in her notice and signed up with Goble and Cohn for a new piece they are starring her in.” “Ah, she couldn't!” cried Sally. “My dear, she did! She's out on the road with it now. I had to break the news to poor old Fillmore at the dock when he landed. It was rather a blow. I must say it wasn't what I would call playing the game. I know there isn't supposed to be any sentiment in business, but after all we had given Elsa her big chance. But Fillmore wouldn't put her name up over the theatre in electrics, and Goble and Cohn made it a clause in her contract that they would, so nothing else mattered. People are like that.” “But Elsa... She used not to be like that.”