"It's too late to get anybody else for to-night," said Reeser, impatiently. "Let her walk through the part, and we'll see what can be done in the morning." Then seeing Nance's indignant eyes on the director, he added with a comical twist of his big mouth, "Want to be a bear?"
"Sure!" said Nance, with spirit, "if the Dago can't teach me to dance, maybe he can teach me to growl."
The joke was lost upon the director, but it put Reeser into such a good humor that he sent her down to the dressing-room to try on the costume. Ten minutes later, a little bear, awkward but ecstatic, scrambled madly up the steps, and an excited voice called out:
For the rest of the morning Nance practised her part, getting used to the clumsy suit of fur, learning to adjust her mask so that she could see through the little, round, animal eyes, and keeping the other girls in a titter of amusement over her surreptitious imitation of the irascible Pulatki.
When the rehearsal was over there was much good-natured hustling and raillery as the girls changed into their street costumes. At Birdie's invitation Nance went with her to the rooming-house around the corner, where you had to ring a bell to get in, a convention which in itself spelt elegance, and up one flight, two flights, three flights of carpeted steps to a front-hall bedroom on the fourth floor.
"Gee, it's a mess!" said Birdie, tossing some beribboned lingerie from a chair into an open trunk. "There's a bag of rolls around here some place. We can make some tea over the gas."
Nance darted from one object to another with excited cries of admiration. Everything was sweet and wonderful and perfectly grand! Suddenly she came to a halt before the dresser, in the center of which stood a large, framed photograph.
"That's my High Particular," said Birdie, with an uneasy laugh, "recognize him?"
"It's Mac Clarke!" exclaimed Nance, incredulously, "how on earth did you ever get his picture?"
"He give it to me. How do you reckon? I hadn't laid eyes on him for a couple of years 'til I ran across him in New York about a month ago."
"At the theater. He come in with a bunch of other college fellows and recognized me straight off. He stayed in New York two or three days, and maybe we didn't have a peach of a time! Only he got fired from college for it when he went back."