I'm going to engage her for the rest of the season."
When the play was over, Nance, struggling into Birdie's complicated
finery in the dressing-room below, wondered how she could ever manage to
exist until the next performance. Her one consolation was the immediate
prospect of seeing Mac Clarke and the mysterious Monte to whom Birdie had
said she must be nice. As she pinned on a saucy fur toque in place of her
own cheap millinery, she viewed herself critically in the glass. Beside
the big show girls about her, she felt ridiculously young and slender and
insignificant.
"I believe I'll put on some paint!" she said.
Birdie laughed.
"What for, Silly? Your cheeks are blazing now. You'll have time enough
to paint 'em when you've been dancing a couple of years."
They were among the last to leave the dressing-room, and when they
reached the stage entrance, Birdie spied two figures.
"There they are!" she whispered to Nance, "the fat one is Monte,
the other--"
Nance had an irresistible impulse to run away. Now that the time had
come, she didn't want to meet those sophisticated young men in their long
coats and high hats. She wouldn't know how to act, what to say. But
Birdie had already joined them, and was turning to say airily:
"Shake hands with my friend Miss Millay, Mr. Clarke--and, I say, Monte,
what's your other name?"
The older of the young men laughed good-naturedly.
"Monte'll do," he said. "I'm that to half the girls in town.
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