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86 WILD MARGARET.
she was perfectly content with minor parts in the bur-
lesques at the Frivolity Theater. me :
“Oh, it is you, is it?’ she said, without rising or stop-
ping at the manipulation of one of the lobster claws; ‘I
thought I recognized your voice. Who was it said ‘that
- he never forgot a voice or a face? Some great man. _
Well, I’m like him. You have come just in time. Have
- some lobster?”
“No, thank you, Lottie,” said Ambrose Austin; ‘I.
have only just dined.”’ . oo os
‘*Of course, you swells dine later than ever, now, and |
that’s why you can’t turn up at the theater until we have
got half through the piece. Well, sitdown. Make your- —
self at home. Take-care!’? she exclaimed, as he sank into
an arm-chair; ‘‘ that chair’s got a castor off. Here, take
this, and she kicked and pushed another one toward him.
“Don’t put your cigar out; I’m just going to have a
cigarette. Have some stout? No? Too heavy, I suppose? —
Well, here’s some whisky. And how's the world: treat:
ing you? You look very flourishing; but you always do.
‘I might return the compliment,’’ he said. ‘' You are
still on the Frivolity, Lottie?” .
. Still at the Friv.,”? she assented, lighting a cigarette
and throwing herself not ungracefully on the sofa. ‘Why.
don’t you drop in someevening and give mea hand? You
are too busy at your club with another kind of hand—a _
hand at cards, I suppose?’ she added with charming
candor.
He smiled. 7 . .
“Tl look in some night,” he said; ‘‘ but I suppose they —
will soon be going on tour.”’ So
“Yes, in another fortnight,” she said witha yawn, “ and -
precious glad I shall be. London’s getting too warm even
for this child.” .
And yet I want you to stay in London,’’ -he said ,
quietly.
She looked across at him and blew out a ring of smoke
scientifically,
_“*You do, do you? What for? Are you going to take a
theater and engage me as leading lady?”
‘Do I look like it?”’ he retorted with a smile.
‘Well, not much,” she said, surveying him critically.
‘People might take you for a good many things, Mr. Am-
brose, but they wouldn’t take you for a fool, or if they did
they would be taken in.”’
‘ **Thanks, Lottie,’ he said,
compliment.’’
“That is something like a
.. "No, don’t think you are such an idiot as to take a