The Benson signal., 1918-01-12

exception was the Junior League show
in Easter week, for which she put in
quite lot of work. She was to have
danced in it.
This is an annual entertainment
by which Chicago sets great store. All
the smartest and best-looking of the
younger set take part in it, in cos
tunes that would do credit to chorus
dresser, and as much of Chicago as
is willing and able to pay five dollars
a seat for the privilege is welcome
to come and look. Delirious weeks
are spent in rehearsal, under a first
class professional director; audience
and performers have an equally good
time, and Charity, as residuary lega-
tee, profits by thousands.
Rose dropped in at a rehearsal one
day at the end of solid two hours
of committee work, found it unexpect-
edly amusing, and made point, there
after, of attending when she could.
Her interest was heightened, if not
wholly actuated, by some things jim
my Wallace had been telling her late
ly about how such things were done
on the real stage.
He had written q musical comedy
once, lived through the production Of
it, and had spent a hard-earned two
weeks vacation trouping with it on
the road, so he could speak with au-
thOrity. It was a wonderful Odyssey
when you could get him to tell it,
and as Rose made a good audience,
she got the whole thing at her dinner
table.
The thing got a sociological twist
eventually, Of course, when Jane want
ed. to know If it were true that the
chorus girls received inadequate pay.
Jimmy demolished this with more
wrath than he often showed. He didn't
know any other sort of job that paid
totally unframed girl as well. It
took a really accomplished stenogra-
pher, for instance, to earn as much a
week as was paid the average chorus
girl. The trouble was that the indis-
pensable assets in the business were
not character and intelligence and am
bition, but just personal charms.
"But a girl who's serious about it,
who doesn't have to be told the same
thing more than once, and catches on,
sometimes, without being told at all,
why, she can always have job and
she can be as independent as any:
body. She can get twenty-five dollars
a week or even as high as thirty"
The latter part of this conversation
was what she was to remember after
ward, but the thing that impressed
Rose at the time, and that held her
for hours looking on at the League
show rehearsals, was what Jimmy had
told her about the technical side of
the work of production, the labors of
the director, and so on.
AS the weeks and months wore away,
and as the season Of violent alter
nations between summer and winter,
which the Chicagoan calls spring,
gave place to summer itself, Rose
was driven to intrench herself more
and more deeply behind this great
expectation. It was like dam hold
ing back waters that otherwise would
have rushed down upon her and swept
her away.
And then came Harriet, Rodney's
other sister, and the pressure behind
the dam rose higher.
Rose had tried, rather unsuccess-
fully, to realize that there was actu-
ally in existence another woman who
occupied, by blood anyway, the same
position toward Rodney and herself
that Frederick did. She felt almost
like real sister toward Frederica.
But without quite putting the notion
into words, she had always felt it
was just as we'll that Harriet was an
Italian contessa, four thousand miles
away. Rodney and FreCerjca spoke
Of her affectionately, to be sure, but
their references made a picture of a
rather formidably correct, seriously
aristocratic sort Of person.
She'd discovered, along in the win
ter sometime, that Harriet's affairs
were going rather badly. 1t was along
in May that the cable came to Frede-
rica announcing that Harriet was COM
ing back for long visit. ''That's all
she said," Rodney explained to Rose.
"But I suppose it means the finish.
She said she didn't want any fuss
made, but she hinted she'd like to have
Freddy meet her In New York, and
Freddy's going Poor old Harriet We
must try to cheer her up"
She didn't seem much in need of
cheering up, Rose thought, when they
first met. All that showed on the con-
tessa's highly polished surface was a