The leading lady opened her lips, gulped, tried again, gulped
again--Pearlie Schultz shook a sympathetic head.
"Ain't had a decent, close-to-nature powwow with a woman for
weeks and weeks, have you?"
"How did you know?" cried the leading lady.
"You've got that hungry look. There was a lady drummer here
last winter, and she had the same expression. She was so dead sick
of eating her supper and then going up to her ugly room and reading
and sewing all evening that it was a wonder she'd stayed good. She
said it was easy enough for the men. They could smoke, and play
pool, and go to a show, and talk to any one that looked good to
'em. But if she tried to amuse herself everybody'd say she was
tough. She cottoned to me like a burr to a wool skirt. She
traveled for a perfumery house, and she said she hadn't talked to
a woman, except the dry-goods clerks who were nice to her trying to
work her for her perfume samples, for weeks an' weeks. Why, that
woman made crochet by the bolt, and mended her clothes evenings
whether they needed it or not, and read till her eyes come near
going back on her."
The leading lady seized Pearlie's hand and squeezed it.
"That's it! Why, I haven't talked--really talked--to a real
woman since the company went out on the road. I'm leading lady of
the `Second Wife' company, you know.
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