The gaiety, with its flamboyant entrance, round which the lights flared enticingly at night, had always seemed to Nance an earthly paradise into which the financially blessed alone were privileged to enter. At the "Star" there were acrobats and funny Jews with big noses and Irishmen who were always falling down; but the Gaiety was different. Twice Nance had passed that fiery portal, and she knew that once inside, you drifted into states of beatitude, which eternity itself was too short to enjoy. The world ceased to exist for you, until a curtain, as relentless as fate, descended, and you reached blindly for your hat and stumbled down from the gallery to the balcony, and from the balcony to the lobby, and thence out into the garish world, dazed, bewildered, unreconciled to reality, and not knowing which way to turn to go home.
But to-day as she passed the main entrance and made her way through a side-passage to the stage-door, she tingled with a keener thrill than she had ever felt before.
"Is Miss Smelts here?" she asked a man who was going in as she did.
"Smelts?" he repeated. "What does she do?"
"Nobody here by that name," he said, and hurried on.
Nance stood aside and waited, with a terrible sinking of the heart. She waited a half hour, then an hour, while people came and went. Just as she was about to give up in despair, she saw a tall, handsome girl hurry up the steps and come toward her. She had to look twice before she could make sure that the imposing figure was Birdie.
"Hello, kid," was Birdie's casual greeting. "I forgot all about you. Just as cute looking as ever, eh! Where did you get that hat?"
"Ten-cent store," said Nance, triumphantly.
"Can you beat that?" said Birdie. "You always did have a style about you. But your hair's fixed wrong. Come on down to the dressing-room while I change. I'll do it over before you see Reeser."
Nance followed her across a barn of a place where men in shirt-sleeves were dragging scenes this way and that.
"Mind the steps; they are awful!" warned Birdie, as they descended into a gas-lit region partitioned off into long, low dressing-rooms.
"Here's where I hang out. Sit down and let me dude you up a bit. You always did wear your hair too plain. I'll fix it so's it will make little Peroxide Pierson green with envy."