I give Lena one look, for which Belasco should pay me a thousand dollars a night. Lena reads it out loud quick as a wink. She snickers, pokes me in the ribs again, and, “What to hell do I think you are, hey?” That's just what I'd meant. “Gee!” says Lena. “Some fool what can't get some kind of a dope!” “You said it!” “Say, got more 'n one dope?” asks Lena, hopefully. Meanwhile she sets out, with my aid, row after row of dinky little deep boxes. “Say now,” say I to Lena, “and what would a girl be doin' with jus' _one_ dope?” “You said it!” says Lena. At which follows a discussion on dopes, ending by Lena's promising never to vamp my dope if I won't vamp hers. “Where'd ya work last?” asks Lena. One thing the first day taught me. If you want to act the part and feel the part, earrings and gum help, but if there is one thing you are more conscious of than all else, it is such proper English as you possess—which compared to Boston is not much, but compared to Lena and Ida and Mary and Louise and Susie and Annie is painfully flawless. Chew hard as ever you can, if you tell Fannie, “There aren't any more plantations,” it echoes and re-echoes and shrieks at you from the four sides of Christendom. But holler, “Fannie, there ain't no more plantations!” and it is like the gentle purring of a home cat by comparison. Funny how it is easier to say “My Gawd!” and “Where t' hell's Ida!” than “I 'ain't got none.” Any way round, you never do get over being conscious of your grammar. If it is correct, it is lonesome as the first robin. If it is properly awful, there are those school-teacher upbringers. I am just wondering if one might not be dining with the head of the university philosophy department and his academic guests some night and hear one's voice uttering down a suddenly silent table, “She ain't livin' at that address no more.” Utterly abashed, one's then natural exclamation on the stillness would be, “My Gawd!” Whereat the hostess would busily engage her end of the table in anguished conversation, giving her husband one look, which, translated into Lena's language, would say, “What t' hell did we ask her for, anyhow?”