"He needed money bad, and through a friend I let him have a couple of thou on this machine. Ain't I the business woman? "Wilbur and I have just been riding ourselves to death ever since. He has been acting awful lately. Ever since he heard that Friar Weber and Friar Field were going to appear together at the festival he has been soused. It was all I could do to restrain him from kissing Phil Mindel in the Cadillac the other evening. He just don't care what he does. "Have you bought your tickets? Let me see. I have six choice ones here in the seventh row. You'll want to bring your family, of course, 'cause it will be the chance of a lifetime. Nothing like it seen before under one canvas. For stellar attractions it's going to have Barnum & Bailey's looking like a Sunday school entertainment. Yes, sir, and I personally will be there like the Trinity chimes. "Alla McSweeney has gone and blown herself for one of these racecourse hats. You know these big things that have a half-mile track around the outside. While I do not wish to injure the poor dear, still I will say that she certainly looks one of these long-handled Jap umbrellas. You know she is such a skinny thing! Honest, this new hip style they are boosting this season just saved her life. She was getting saddle galls from carrying so many naturals. I wouldn't say this unless I absolutely knew, and of course I have seen her early in the morning when you haven't. "There are little confidences us girls exchange in the privacy of our boudoirs that would never do for the ear of a man. She tried to get a job as one of those six-foot girls in 'The Love Waltz,' but the manager told her she had better go with a circus. She naturally queried 'Why?' And he, the rude thing, told her she could get a job as a quarter-pole. That's why she could never get a job with the Held show. She was all right in low neck, but when it came to tights! Well, you know bowlegs never did appeal to the front row. "Mind you, I wouldn't say a thing that would hurt her character the least bit, but you should have seen the way she carried on when she was out in Chicago. You know that anyone who runs around with those La Salle street spendthrifts loses class, anyway, and she just tore around that North Side something scandalous, and till my dying day I never will forget the scene she and the comedian's wife had on the platform in that dear Peoria.