Page:A Damsel in Distress.pdf/36

 There’s a good title for a song for you, George. Excuse me while I grapple with the correspondence. I'll bet half of these are mash notes. I got three between the first and second acts last night. Why the nobility and gentry of this burg should think that I’m their affinity just because I’ve got golden hair—which is perfectly genuine, Mac, I can show you the pedigree—and because I earn an honest living singing off the key, is more than I can understand.”

Mac leaned his massive shoulders comfortably against the building and resumed his chat.

“I expect you're feeling very ’appy to-day, sir?”

George pondered. He was certainly feeling better since he had seen Billie Dore, but he was far from being himself.

“I ought to be, I suppose, but I’m not.”

“Ah, you're getting blarzy, sir, that’s what it is. You've ’ad too much of the fat, you ’ave. This piece was a big ’it in America, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, It ran over a year in New York, and there are three companies of it out now.”

“That’s ’ow it is, you see. You've gone and got blarzy. Too big a ’elping of success you've ’ad.” Mac wagged a head like a harvest moon. “You aren’t a married man, are you, sir?”

Billie Dore finished skimming through her mail, and crumpled the letters up into a large ball, which she handed to Mac.

“Here’s something for you to read in your spare moments, Mac. Glance through them any time you have a suspicion you may be a chump, and you'll have the comfort of knowing that there are others. What were you saying about being married?”