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me sharply.
"How long are you going to stop on the other side?"
"Oh, no time; maybe a week."
"You must have money to burn. Isn't there anywhere nearer home where you can go for the weekend cheaper? What are you going for?"
"To see a friend who wants me to join her in the millinery."
I had quite expected that people would ask me what I was going for, and as an air of mystery was the one thing I wanted to avoid I had made up my mind what tale I would tell. But somehow, when I talked to Sadie Lawrence about the millinery it didn't seem to sound right. She looked me up and down, in particular she looked at my hat.
"Millinery!" she remarked. "Are you going to make the hats? Who made yours?"
As it happened I had made mine myself, and I was not ashamed of it either; but somehow there was something about the way in which she asked the question which seemed to make it difficult to answer.
"I'm not going to do the making," I said. "I'm going to look after the business side."
"Perhaps that's just as well," she replied, "though they do say that milliners never do put a decent hat on their own heads. I suppose you have got some money with you?"
I was surprised. I think I showed it.
"Why do you say that?"
"Well, if you're going to buy a millinery business--"
"I didn't say I was going to buy it."
"Well, take a share in it it comes to the same thing."
"Nor did I say I was going to take a share in it; I am only going to look." Since the only way to stop her asking questions seemed to be to ask them myself I put one to her. "Going to America to fulfil an engagement?"
"An engagement? Gee whiz! I'm going to work the McCulloch circuit four months on the road. Talk about one night stands! people don't know what that sort of thing means till they try America. You do two shows a night, and maybe a matinee; then you do the same thing at some place four hundred miles away to-morrow, with no connection to speak of, so that the L
