Green Fancy

"You see, Mr. Barnes, these are the only duds I have with me. It wasn't necessary to put on this hat, of course, but I did it simply to make the character complete. I might just as well make beds and clean washstands in a picture hat as in a low-necked gown, so here I am."

She was a tall, pleasant-faced girl of twenty-three or four, not unlike her father in many respects. Her features were rather heavy, her mouth large but comely, her eyes dark and lustrous behind heavy lashes. As she now appeared before Barnes, she was the typical stage society woman: in other words, utterly commonplace. In a drawing-room she would have been as conspicuously out of place as she was in her present occupation.

"I am very sorry," he said lamely. "I have heard something of your misfortunes from your father and--the others. It's--it's really hard luck."

"I call it rather good luck to have got away with the only dress in the lot that cost more than tuppence," she said, smiling again. "Lord knows what would have happened to me if they had dropped down on us at the end of the first act. I was the beggar's daughter, you see,-- absolutely in rags."

"You might have got away in your ordinary street clothes, however," he said; "which would have been pleasanter, I dare say."

"I dare say," she agreed brightly. "Glad to have met you. I think you'll find everything NEARLY all right. Good night, sir."

She smiled brightly, unaffectedly, as she turned toward the open door. There was something forelorn about her, after all, and his heart was touched.

"Better luck, Miss Thackeray. Every cloud has its silver lining."

She stopped and faced him once more. "That's the worst bromide in the language," she said. "If I were to tell you how many clouds I've seen and how little silver, you'd think I was lying. This experience? Why, it's a joy compared to some of the jolts we've had,--dad and me. And the others, too, for that matter. We've had to get used to it. Five years ago I would have jumped out of a ten story window before I'd have let you see me in this get-up. I know you'll laugh yourself sick over the way I look, and so will your friends when you tell them about me, but, thank the Lord, I shan't be in a position to hear you. So why should I mind? What a fellow doesn't know, isn't going to hurt him. You haven't laughed in my face, and I'm grateful for that. What you do afterward can't make the least bit of difference to me."