"What, again!" Peggy Watson said and gave her a list of doctors.
Afterwards she lay on a sticky plush couch in an alcove behind a dirty brown portiere. How could one have been in such pain, live, and now not feel a thing? The doctor hadn't cared how he hurt. And this one sure got other thrills out of his business.
Her hands were still gloved because she didn't have a wedding ring and she stifled an hysterical impulse to laugh at the spectacle of herself on the doctor's table with her gloves on as Mrs. John Battenberg. Aunt Mabel's parlor table's Battenberg lace cover was her husband.
Peggy Watson met her in a lunchroom at the corner.
"Gee, kid, you must feel awful. Lucky you don't have to go on the same night like the girls in the chorus do after they go through it the same day. What did he charge?"
"Three hundred and fifty dollars," she said. Lucky, she thought, I could draw on that thousand I've been saving on the side to buy a fur coat for Mother to surprise her at Christmas. I can make it up when Beman starts paying me that six hundred a week.
"I guess you looked too expensive. Did you tell your Mother?"
"I wouldn't worry her."
"Well anyway, it's over. Say, that was a good idea of yours about the ballroom routine. Salvado and I are working on a tango and a jazzed waltz. What shall I wear for the tryout?"
"You'll have to wear a swell dress because those producers have no imagination. They have to see you exactly in character. Anyway, it was my idea, and after all you got me my first job, and now it's my turn, and I've got three hundred dollars to burn, so I'll buy the dress."
It was wonderful to be clean of Carly's money, and Carly.
Never never never again! I'm going to work hard and get somewhere.
