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<p>“He will to me,” said Celia.</p>
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<p>“Riches—” began Annette, unsheathing the not unjustifiable feminine sting.</p>
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<p>“Oh, you’re not so beautiful,” said Celia, with her wide, disarming smile. “Neither am I; but he shan’t know that there’s any money mixed up with my looks, such as they are. That’s fair. Now, I want you to lend me one of your caps and an apron, Annette.”</p>
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<p>“Oh, marshmallows!” cried Annette. “I see. Ain’t it lovely? It’s just like <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Lurline, the Left-Handed; or, A Buttonhole Maker’s Wrongs</i>. I’ll bet he’ll turn out to be a count.”</p>
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<p>“Oh, marshmallows!” cried Annette. “I see. Ain’t it lovely? It’s just like <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Lurline, the Left-Handed; or, a Buttonhole Maker’s Wrongs</i>. I’ll bet he’ll turn out to be a count.”</p>
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<p>There was a long hallway (or “passageway,” as they call it in the land of the Colonels) with one side latticed, running along the rear of the house. The grocer’s young man went through this to deliver his goods. One morning he passed a girl in there with shining eyes, sallow complexion, and wide, smiling mouth, wearing a maid’s cap and apron. But as he was cumbered with a basket of Early Drumhead lettuce and Trophy tomatoes and three bunches of asparagus and six bottles of the most expensive Queen olives, he saw no more than that she was one of the maids.</p>
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<p>But on his way out he came up behind her, and she was whistling “Fisher’s Hornpipe” so loudly and clearly that all the piccolos in the world should have disjointed themselves and crept into their cases for shame.</p>
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<p>The grocer’s young man stopped and pushed back his cap until it hung on his collar button behind.</p>
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<p>Ileen Hinkle!</p>
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<p>The spelling is correct, for I have seen her write it. No doubt she had been named by ear; but she so splendidly bore the orthography that Tom Moore himself (had he seen her) would have endorsed the phonography.</p>
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<p>Ileen was the daughter of the house, and the first Lady Cashier to invade the territory south of an east-and-west line drawn through Galveston and Del Rio. She sat on a high stool in a rough pine grandstand—or was it a temple?—under the shelter at the door of the kitchen. There was a barbed-wire protection in front of her, with a little arch under which you passed your money. Heaven knows why the barbed wire; for every man who dined Parisianly there would have died in her service. Her duties were light; each meal was a dollar; you put it under the arch, and she took it.</p>
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<p>I set out with the intent to describe Ileen Hinkle to you. Instead, I must refer you to the volume by Edmund Burke entitled: <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful</i>. It is an exhaustive treatise, dealing first with the primitive conceptions of beauty—roundness and smoothness, I think they are, according to Burke. It is well said. Rotundity is a patent charm; as for smoothness—the more new wrinkles a woman acquires, the smoother she becomes.</p>
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<p>I set out with the intent to describe Ileen Hinkle to you. Instead, I must refer you to the volume by Edmund Burke entitled: <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful</i>. It is an exhaustive treatise, dealing first with the primitive conceptions of beauty—roundness and smoothness, I think they are, according to Burke. It is well said. Rotundity is a patent charm; as for smoothness—the more new wrinkles a woman acquires, the smoother she becomes.</p>
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<p>Ileen was a strictly vegetable compound, guaranteed under the Pure Ambrosia and Balm-of-Gilead Act of the year of the fall of Adam. She was a fruit-stand blonde—strawberries, peaches, cherries, <abbr class="eoc">etc.</abbr> Her eyes were wide apart, and she possessed the calm that precedes a storm that never comes. But it seems to me that words (at any rate per) are wasted in an effort to describe the beautiful. Like fancy, “It is engendered in the eyes.” There are three kinds of beauties—I was foreordained to be homiletic; I can never stick to a story.</p>
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<p>The first is the freckle-faced, snub-nosed girl whom you like. The second is Maud Adams. The third is, or are, the ladies in Bouguereau’s paintings. Ileen Hinkle was the fourth. She was the mayoress of Spotless Town. There were a thousand golden apples coming to her as Helen of the Troy laundries.</p>
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<p>The Parisian Restaurant was within a radius. Even from beyond its circumference men rode in to Paloma to win her smiles. They got them. One meal—one smile—one dollar. But, with all her impartiality, Ileen seemed to favor three of her admirers above the rest. According to the rules of politeness, I will mention myself last.</p>
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<p>“I get one hundred for mine,” said Cherry. “That’s about the natural discount for a woman. But I live on it and put a few simoleons every week under the loose brick in the old kitchen hearth. The stage is all right. I love it; but there’s something else I love better—that’s a little country home, some day, with Plymouth Rock chickens and six ducks wandering around the yard.</p>
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<p>“Now, let me tell you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hart, I am <em>strictly business</em>. If you want me to play the opposite part in your sketch, I’ll do it. And I believe we can make it go. And there’s something else I want to say: There’s no nonsense in my makeup; I’m <em>on the level</em>, and I’m on the stage for what it pays me, just as other girls work in stores and offices. I’m going to save my money to keep me when I’m past doing my stunts. No Old Ladies’ Home or Retreat for Imprudent Actresses for me.</p>
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<p>“If you want to make this a business partnership, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hart, with all nonsense cut out of it, I’m in on it. I know something about vaudeville teams in general; but this would have to be one in particular. I want you to know that I’m on the stage for what I can cart away from it every payday in a little manila envelope with nicotine stains on it, where the cashier has licked the flap. It’s kind of a hobby of mine to want to cravenette myself for plenty of rainy days in the future. I want you to know just how I am. I don’t know what an all-night restaurant looks like; I drink only weak tea; I never spoke to a man at a stage entrance in my life, and I’ve got money in five savings banks.”</p>
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<p>“Miss Cherry,” said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, “you’re in on your own terms. I’ve got ‘strictly business’ pasted in my hat and stenciled on my makeup box. When I dream of nights I always see a five-room bungalow on the north shore of Long Island, with a Jap cooking clam broth and duckling in the kitchen, and me with the title deeds to the place in my pongee coat pocket, swinging in a hammock on the side porch, reading Stanley’s <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Explorations into Africa</i>. And nobody else around. You never was interested in Africa, was you, Miss Cherry?”</p>
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<p>“Miss Cherry,” said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, “you’re in on your own terms. I’ve got ‘strictly business’ pasted in my hat and stenciled on my makeup box. When I dream of nights I always see a five-room bungalow on the north shore of Long Island, with a Jap cooking clam broth and duckling in the kitchen, and me with the title deeds to the place in my pongee coat pocket, swinging in a hammock on the side porch, reading Stanley’s <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Explorations Into Africa</i>. And nobody else around. You never was interested in Africa, was you, Miss Cherry?”</p>
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<p>“Not any,” said Cherry. “What I’m going to do with my money is to bank it. You can get four percent on deposits. Even at the salary I’ve been earning, I’ve figured out that in ten years I’d have an income of about $50 a month just from the interest alone. Well, I might invest some of the principal in a little business—say, trimming hats or a beauty parlor, and make more.”</p>
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<p>“Well,” said Hart, “You’ve got the proper idea all right, all right, anyhow. There are mighty few actors that amount to anything at all who couldn’t fix themselves for the wet days to come if they’d save their money instead of blowing it. I’m glad you’ve got the correct business idea of it, Miss Cherry. I think the same way; and I believe this sketch will more than double what both of us earn now when we get it shaped up.”</p>
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<p>The subsequent history of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.play">Mice Will Play</i> is the history of all successful writings for the stage. Hart & Cherry cut it, pieced it, remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and business, changed the lines, restored ’em, added more, cut ’em out, renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, substituted a dagger for the pistol, restored the pistol—put the sketch through all the known processes of condensation and improvement.</p>
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<p>“Anna Held’ll jump at it,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Skidder to himself, putting his feet up against the lambrequins and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an aerial cuttlefish.</p>
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<p>Presently the tocsin call of “Clara!” sounded to the world the state of Miss Leeson’s purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words “Two dollars!”</p>
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<p>“I’ll take it!” sighed Miss Leeson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron bed.</p>
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<p>Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes she had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps of the high stoop with the other roomers. Miss Leeson was not intended for a skylight room when the plans were drawn for her creation. She was gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once she let <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy, <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">It’s No Kid; or, The Heir of the Subway</i>.</p>
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<p>Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes she had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps of the high stoop with the other roomers. Miss Leeson was not intended for a skylight room when the plans were drawn for her creation. She was gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once she let <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy, <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">It’s No Kid; or, the Heir of the Subway</i>.</p>
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<p>There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss Leeson had time to sit on the steps for an hour or two. But Miss Longnecker, the tall blonde who taught in a public school and said, “Well, really!” to everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked in a department store, sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat on the middle step and the men would quickly group around her.</p>
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<p>Especially <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part in a private, romantic (unspoken) drama in real life. And especially <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hoover, who was forty-five, fat, flush and foolish. And especially very young <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Evans, who set up a hollow cough to induce her to ask him to leave off cigarettes. The men voted her “the funniest and jolliest ever,” but the sniffs on the top step and the lower step were implacable.</p>
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