Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1917 — ROSE STANTON ALDRICH MAKES AN OPPORTUNITY FOR HERSELF DURING REHEARSALS OF THE MUSICAL COMEDY IN WHICH SHE IS TO BE A CHORUS GIRL AND FINDS HAPPINESS [ARTICLE]

ROSE STANTON ALDRICH MAKES AN OPPORTUNITY FOR HERSELF DURING REHEARSALS OF THE MUSICAL COMEDY IN WHICH SHE IS TO BE A CHORUS GIRL AND FINDS HAPPINESS

Synopsis, Rose Stanton, of moderate circumstances, marries wealthy Rodney Aldrich, on short acquaintance, and for more than a year lives in idleness and luxury in Chicago. The life palls on her, she longs to do something useful, but decides that motherhood will be a big enough job? She has twins, however, and they are put into the care of a professional nurse. Rose again becomes intensely dissatisfied with idleness, so over the violent protest ofrher doting husband she “"disappears"ihto^tlie'busiiiess'WT>rld~to-Tnftke good on lter own? initiative, gets a job in the chorus of a musical comedy in rehearsal and lives under an assumed name in a cheap rooming house. She is well liked by the show producer because of her intelligent efforts and he commissions her to help costume the chorus. Her fashionable friends think she has gone to California on a long visit.

CHAPIER XVIL—CPHUriueU. —l2 Rose, arriving promptly at the hour agreed upon, had a wait of fifteen minutes before any of her sisters of the sextette or Mrs. Goldsmith arrived. “I don't want anything just now,” she told the saleswoman. But she hadn’t, in these few weeks of Clark street, lost her air of one who will buy if she sees anything worth buying. In fact, the saleswoman thought, correctly, that she knew her, and showed her the few really smart things they had in the store —a Poiret evening gown, a couple of afternoon frocks from Jennie. There wasn’t much, she admitted, it being just between seasons. The rest of the sextette arrived in a pair and a trio. One of them squealed “Hello, Dane!” The saleswoman was shocked on seeing Rose nod an acknowledgment of this greeting, and just about that time they heard Mrs. Goldsmith explaining who she was and the nature of her errand to the manHger. The sort of gowns she presently began exclaiming over with delight, and ordering put into the heap of possibilities, were horrible enough to have drawn a protest from the wax figures in the windows. The more completely the fundamental lines of a frock were disgQiSdd With - sartorial work, the more successful this lady felt It to be. An ornament, to Mrs. Goldsmith, djd not live up to its possibilities, unless it in turn were decorated^with ornaments of its own; like the fleas on the fleas of the dog. Rose spent a miserable half-hour -worrying over these selections of thewife of the principal .owner of the show, feeling she ought to put up some sort of fight and hardly deterred by the patent futility of such a course. All the while she kept one eye on the door and prayed for the arrival of John Galbraith.

He came in just as Mrs. Goldsmith finished her task —just when, by a process of studious elimination, every passable thing in the store had been discarded and the twelve most utterly hopeless ones—two for each girl—-laid aside for purchase. The girls were dispatched to put on the evening frocks first, ' and were then paraded before the director. He was a diplomat and he was quick on his feet. Rose, watching his face very closely, thought that for just a split second she caught a gleam of ineffable horror. But it was gone so quickly she could almost have believed that she had been mistaken. He didn’t say much about the costumes, but he said it so promptly and adequately that Mrs. Goldsmith beamed with pride. She sent the girls away to put on the other set—the afternoon frocks; and once more the director’s approbation, 'though laconic, was one hundred per cent pure. “That’s all,” he said in sudden dismissal of the sextette. “Rehearsal at eight-thirty." \ . Five of them scurried like children let out of school around behind the set of screens that made an extemporaneous dressing room, and begah changing In a mad scramble, hoping to get away and to get their dinners eaten soon enough to enable them to see the whole bill at a movie show before the evening’s rehearsal, ti. - But Rose remained hanging about, ■a couple of paces away from where Galbraith was talking to Mrs. Goldsmith. The only question that remained, he was telling her, was whether her selections were not too —well, too refined, genteel, one might say, for the stage. He wasn't looking at her as he talked, and presently, as his gaze wandered about the store, It encountered Rose's face. She hadn’t prepared it for the encounter, and it wote, hardly veiled, a look of humorous appreciation. His sentence broke, then completed Itself; She turned away, but the next moment he called out to her: "Were you waiting to see mg, Dane?” “I’d like to speak to you a minute,’’ she said, “when you have time." “All right. Go and change your Clothes first," he said.