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By Root 8973 0

and stagescenery and to run down the flight of drafty cement stairs and past old greyfaced Luke who was in his little glass box pul ing on his over-coat getting ready to go home himself. She'd take a deep breath when she got out into the cold wind of the street. She never would let Tad meet her at the theater with the other stagedoor Johnnies. She liked to find him standing with his wel polished tan shoes wide apart and his coonskin coat thrown open so that you could see his striped tie and soft rumpled shirt, among people in eveningdress in the lobby of the Astor. Tad was a simple kind of redfaced boy who never had much to say. Margo did al the talking from the minute he handed her into the taxi to go to the nightclub. She'd keep him laughing with stories about the other girls and the wardrobewomen and the chorusmen. Sometimes he'd ask her to tel him a story over again so that he could remember it to tel his friends at col ege. The story about how the chorusmen, who were most of them fairies, had put the bitch's curse on a young fel ow who was Maisie De Mar's boyfriend, so that he'd turned into a fairy too, scared Tad half to death. "A lot of things sure do go on that people don't know about," he said.

Margo wrinkled up her nose. "You don't know the half of it, dearie." "But it must be just a story." "No, honestly, Tad, that's how it happened . . . we could hear them yel ing and oohooing like they do down in their dressing-room. They al stood around in a circle and put the bitches'

curse on him. I tel you we were scared."

-258-That night they went to the Columbus Circle Childs for some ham and eggs. "Gee, Margo," said Tad with his mouth ful as he was finishing his second order of butter-cakes.

"I don't think this is the right life for you. . . . You're the smartest girl I ever met and damn refined too." "Don't worry, Tad, little Margo isn't going to stay in the chorus al her life." On the way home in the taxi Tad started to make passes at her. It surprised Margo because he wasn't a fresh kind of a boy. He wasn't drunk either, he'd only had one bottle of Canadian ale. "Gosh, Margo, you're wonderful. . . . You won't drink and you won't cuddlecooty." She gave him a little pecking kiss on the cheek. "You ought to un-derstand, Tad," she said, "I've got to keep my mind on my work."

"I guess you think I'm just a dumb cluck."

"You're a nice boy, Tad, but I like you best when you keep your hands in your pockets."

"Oh, you're marvelous," sighed Tad, looking at her with round eyes from out of his turnedup fuzzy col ar from his own side of the cab. "Just a woman men forget," she said. Having Tad to Sunday dinner got to be a regular

thing. He'd come early to help Agnes lay the table, and take off his coat and rol up his shirtsleeves afterwards to help with the dishes, and then al four of them would play hearts and each drink a glass of beefironandwine tonic from the drugstore. Margo hated those Sunday afternoons but Frank and Agnes seemed to love them, and Tad would stay til the last minute before he had to rush off to meet his father at the Metropolitan Club, saying he'd never had such a good time in his life.

One snowy Sunday afternoon when Margo had slipped

away from the cardtable saying she had a headache and had lain on the bed al afternoon listening to the hissing of the steamheat almost crying from restlessness and bore--259-dom, Agnes said with her eyes shining when she came in in her negligee after Tad was gone, "Margo, you've got to marry him. He's the sweetest boy. He was tel ing us how this place is the first time in his life he's ever had any feeling of home. He's been brought up by servants and ridingmasters and people like that. . . . I never thought a mil ionaire could be such a dear. I just think he's a darling."

"He's no mil ionaire," said Margo, pouting.

"His old man has a seat on the stockexchange," cal ed Frank from the other room. "You don't buy them with cigarstore coupons, do you, dear child?"

"Wel ," said Margo, stretching and yawning, "I cer-tainly wouldn't be getting a spendthrift for a husband.