Catch me workin' for them like you do!"
Nance was puzzled, but not convinced. Wiser heads than hers have
struggled with a similar problem in vain. She kept steadily on, and it
was only when the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle came up from below that
her fingers fumbled and the buttons went rolling on the floor. Six
nights in the week, when Mr. Demry was in condition, he played at the
theater, and on Sunday nights he stayed at home and received his young
friends. On these occasions Nance became so restless that she could
scarcely keep her prancing feet on the floor. She would hook them
resolutely around the legs of the stool and even sit on them one at a
time, but despite all her efforts, they would respond to the rhythmic
notes below.
"Them tunes just make me dance settin' down," she declared, trying to
suit the action to the words.
Sometimes on a rainy afternoon when nobody was being born, or getting
married, or dying, Mrs. Snawdor stayed at home. At such times Nance
seized the opportunity to shift her domestic burden.
There was a cheap theater, called "The Star," around the corner, where a
noisy crowd of boys and girls could always be found in the gallery. It
was a place where you ate peanuts and dropped the shells on the heads of
people below, where you scrapped for your seat and joined in the chorus
and shrieked over the antics of an Irishman, a darkey, or a Jew. But it
was a luxury seldom indulged in, for it cost the frightful sum of ten
cents, not including the peanuts.
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