Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/68

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FROM THE LIFE


dener who was her slave; and, having dressed herself for a drive, she took her satchel in her dog-cart, drove to an exchange stables where she was known, sold the cart and her little mare for two hundred dollars, and bought her ticket for New York.

That night she settled in a studio-room on Twenty-third Street, with a former classmate who was studying music. She had seven hundred dollars. She had left her father the pawn-tickets and a letter addressed to "Dear old Daddykins" and signed "Jane Shore." It informed him, gaily, that as soon as her money ran out she would be back for more.

She had chosen the name of "Jane Shore" because she had read Sir Thomas More's description of the original Jane in a history of famous court beauties—which she had borrowed from a school-mate whose reading was secretly adventurous—and she thought that the description fitted her. So it did, somewhat. And, at least, it shows what she was ambitious to be. It runs:

Proper she was, and faire: nothing in her body that you would have changed, but if you would have wished her somewhat higher. Yet delited not men so much in her bewty as in her pleasant behaviour. For a proper wit had she and could both rede wel and write; mery in company, redy and quick of aunswer, neither mute nor ful of bable; sometimes taunting without displeasure and not without disport.

Her vitality, her will, and her high spirits carried her unwearied through the obscure hardships

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