Just what remarks I made to my sympathetic friend Le Moyne at the end of that speech I cannot now recall.  If any one else can, I can only say I was not a church member then, and let it pass at that.  But when I opened my envelope next salary day and saw my full week’s earnings there, I went to Mr. Daly’s office and told him of my two “sticks” and of Le Moyne’s proposed offer, and for once he laughed at an actor’s joke.

CHAPTER XXII

POOR SEMANTHA_

It has happened to every one of us, I don’t know why, but every mother’s son or daughter of us can look back to the time when we habitually referred to some acquaintance or friend as “poor So-and-So”; and the curious part of it is that if one pauses to consider the why or wherefore of such naming, one is almost sure to find that, financially at least, “poor So-and-So” is better off than the person who is doing the “pooring.”  Nor is “poor So-and-So” always sick or sorrowful, stupid or ugly; and yet, low be it whispered, is there not always a trace of contempt in that word “poor” when applied to an acquaintance?  A very slight trace, of course,—­we lightly rub the dish with garlic, we do not slice it into our salad.  So when we call a friend “poor So-and-So,” consciously or unconsciously, there is beneath all our affection the slight garlic touch of contemptuous pity; how else could I, right to her merry, laughing face, have called this girl poor Semantha?

I had at first no cause to notice her especially; she was poor, so was I; she was in the ballet, so was I. True, I had already had heads nodded sagely in my direction, and had heard voices solemnly murmur, “That girl’s going to do something yet,” and all because I had gone on alone and spoken a few lines loudly and clearly, and had gone off again, without leaving the audience impressed with the idea that they had witnessed the last agonized and dying breath of a girl killed by fright.  I had that much advantage, but we both drew the same amount of salary per week,—­five very torn and very dirty one-dollar bills.  Of course there could have been no rule nor reason for it, but it had so happened that all the young women of the ballet—­there were four—­received their salary in one-dollar bills.  However, I was saying that we, the ballet, dressed together at that time, and poor Semantha first attracted my attention by her almost too great willingness to use my toilet soap, instead of the common brown washing soap she had brought with her.  At some past time this soap must have been of the shape and size of a building brick, but now it resembled a small dumb-bell, so worn was its middle, so nobby its ends.  Then, too, my pins were, to all intents and purposes, her pins; my hair-pins her hair-pins; while worst of all, my precious, real-for-true French rouge was her rouge.

At that point I came near speaking, because poor Semantha was not artistic in her make-up, and she painted not only her cheeks but her eyes, her temples, her jaws, and quite a good sample of each side of her neck.  But just as I would be about to speak, I would bethink me of those nights when, in the interest of art, I had to be hooked up behind, and I would hold my peace.