Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/275

 He had been wondering why she remained so long an "extra" in this company, instead of finding a better engagement with some other, now that the season had well begun and all the stages were busy. When he asked her whether she had any prospect of a "part," she answered, languidly, "No,"—as if she had lost her interest and her ambition. He had learned—from Miss Arden—that she was eking out her small salary by posing during the day, in costume, for magazine illustrators. He had learned also that she and Don had made a morning excursion together to the Bronx. And when he tried to rouse her from the indifferent silence which she maintained with him, he found that she responded most readily to talk of Don.

"You used to know him, in Canada, didn't you?"

"Yes," she said, "I've known him since the first day he came to school—a little fellow in black-velvet knickerbockers—and a Scotch cap. When my sister introduced him to me, he said 'How do you do?' with a little old-fashioned bow that impressed me so much I've never forgotten it. I couldn't open my mouth to him after that."

When Pittsey spoke of the pleasure which Don seemed to find in his "suping," she replied: "He ought to make an actor. I remember at school once, in the winter, he pretended he was dead and the boys buried him in a snow-bank. They almost smothered him. And how I cried when I saw them doing it! . . . He was sent home for having snow down his neck and up his sleeves and in his ears."

She relapsed into a sort of staring meditation. He