Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/57

 course with Ned Wayburn in New York to keep up with the times. Now that the Empire manager had seen Lucy, her pupil, she would have the excuse to approach him. That was all she needed to put her on the map, one talented pupil. And he ought to encourage local talent anyway.

Lucy looked at her solemnly. It was hard to think of a man kissing Miss Klemper. She decided not to mention her latest interview with Mr. Brady.

"How many days do you ride on the train to New York?"

"Three days and two nights. It's a long trip, with a change in Chicago."

Chicago, and New York. New York was Mode and Broadway. She knew about Broadway because Empire actors always talked about it. Broadway! At the Bison Hall the comic had put on a straw hat and swung a stick and had pretended he was George M. Cohan giving "Regards to Broadway." It was hard to think Miss Klemper actually would walk on that street. She wished again she could find a diamond bracelet.

Isn't it funny, I feel sort of lonesome because Miss Klemper is going away. Maybe I should have told her about Mother and me living at Bison Hall. I'll bet she'd have let us stay at the studio. I'd just hate to let her know we didn't have a place to live. Mother says it's nobody's business what we do.

Prospect of the long afternoon stretched interminably to the time when she would be with Mae. In the hard sunlight a warm friendly face recalled an invitation. I think I'll go and call on Miss Shaver.

She scanned names in the grey marble lobby of a red brick apartment house and pressed a button, but there was no answer. Disappointed, she was turning away when the door clicked. A puzzle of doors and steps confused her until she heard a door open on the second floor and ran up expecting to see Miss Shaver.

Instead, peeking out of a barely opened door, she saw a slender young woman in a soft pink flowered dressing gown, with the round pointed-lipped face of a kitten. Large grey eyes observed her with hostility.

"Oh," breathed Lucy apologetically, "I'm looking for Miss Shaver."

The woman hesitated, put a plump small hand to rumpled nondescript hair, and petulantly surveyed the girl from golden tip to patent leather toe.

"What is it, dearest?" a familiar voice called lazily. Rh