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.P"V N 4 --;.-A 1 f. 11 4$ ' v'-: " " - By CYNTHIA TEAL. Copyright. 1922. International Feature Service. Inc. Great Britain Rlg-hts Reserved. CHAPTER XIV. TWO weeks before my eighteenth birthday I walked down the gangplank of a transatlan tic liner into New York City with exactly thirty-two dollars in my purse, no clothing except the barest skimmings of a wardrobe once worth thou sands, my only other possession a battered trunk stacked with letters and unpaid bills of Mrs. Mar garet Teal Paddleford, and the single idea ruling me that somewhere, somehow, I must make not only my own living in the world but a success of my life. How well equipped I was to begin this battle I will leave to the reader's judgment by confessing that, in my anxiety to be economical, I picked an up town hotel famous, I have since learned, for catering mostly to millionaire patrons. I went there simply because I had heard it was more economical than the Plaza or the Ritz. I should have sought a room in a $10-a-week boarding-house, but I am quite honest when I say 1 did not think respectable people lived in boarding-houses. 1 know better now. "Eight dollars a day," said the clerk, when I asked him for his cheapest room. He didn't startle mc ; I was too unworldly to be startled. I took the room gratefully because, though my entire girlhood was spent in a worldly atmosphere, I was so coddled and sheltered from humdrum, workaday folk that I actually didn't know there were hotels with $4-a-day rooms! That was part of my heritage from Sirs. Paddle ford ignorance of life. I inventoried the rest of my inheritance that night when, in my "cheap" little room I delved into the contents of her trunk. First, however, I sat down in a chair facing the window that looked out over the gleaming lights of Manhat tan, and inventoried myself. I was free. Back there in Vienna, three thousand miles away, I had left the only person I feared on earth. My life as Mrs. Paddleford's adopted daugh ter was over never, I vowed, to be taken up again. It was just ten years before that she took me from an orphan asylum. In those ten years I had been lifted into luxury and taught to live like a hot house flower one moment and a girl Oliver Twist the next. I was, first, the despised playmate of a little boy; second, the helpless victim of a woman's rages; third, the tongue-tied witness of her trick to marry a rich husband ; fourth, the protesting beauty bait of her scheme to gouge money out of millionaire so ciety; and last, the bewildered and rebellious com panion of her last final flight through Europe. Ten years! And how had they benefited me ? I emerged from them at seventeen with a smattering of French, music, china painting and other "light arts," and not even a grammar school education; with a cultured voice and not the faintest idea of how to capitalize it; with a taste for champagne and caviar and not even an apple-sauce income; with a list of acquaintances that included millionaires, society leaders, Broadway "rounders," underworld crooks and stage and opera stars and with not a friend in the world! And yet I was free. I was responsible to no one but myself. I had but one obligation to fulfill. If, back there in Vienna, I left the one person I feared, --zr A -At I I JKuXsaL -k SZstr -f Wt.ll I Sflia .... Waster J rph Sent to Cynthia C !t A CV Y J V-' V ':r;W5- Teal by Edna Ml iZ C WJr. Wallace Hopper, J V f" Misl O - . . ' sl- . rS 7- , ,Y- ' ;i.dJ?VL X I) I ?; v: u'av i . ' ' . ' .- rrrif-vv II 1 i y&.'s .yi "va . v - i i i i vi j " i . , m ' ! J J F V r r tT' I I t I . . s-" v-7 rSJ - YS f 4 1 ! 'i .ar -VK ::f MM ft rS TM.'-'.-iV 'A. W : .JrfmjTi 'Ml-iyif ? " life 1 v" r I , r V j.' ..' y' f ' I "..II' I ? I' J I 1 III n. II' Ii 1 I Mill IT ,!' , U '. I ' jT ' i , ' J r . ' S ' y JPL f 1 '11 I (VTJ I W I II I III; ii I --I I I I S 'J II, I U lU'' ' IV. f x a- X vvm ihii 1 J ' lrii- .1:.: , ,yd 1: MM . i K w 1 I I Lif . -v .CtCi " y 1 1 vs iimiftv v n 11 1 in li .1 1 it ? :: :ii ' -.'i: ' ti ; i " 'i. 1 ; v ..-s . 1 1 I I Ml ' 1 1 I I I I I M I I I I I 1 1 JlfS'Qr llll Mill l III I II f ItflllllV saw myself trembling on the brink of that steel and ciiJCi eric ici-r j pce, wtA tAe cty below me a mar nf rnnf--m:.--. fops. One step and I could plunge out of my misery into dark forget-fulness." I also left there the one person I loved.' If my life as Mrs. Paddleford's daugh ter was over, my life as sister to her! son was not. Little Ben Teal, Jr., had ' no one to look to but me for his next meal. In some way I must wrest from this New York I thought I knew so well, and now dreaded, the where withal to keep him from hunger and hardship and finally bring him back to his own country. It was distinctly "up to me" to make good! A job was imperative. I believed my .voice would get me one, or my playing. But how did one go after positions as a singer or a pianist? I hadn't the remotest notion. In my predicament I turned to the trunk. It contained, I knew, Mrs. Paddleford's fcT-- i -V. f tJP 1 Ml HIT' " ( ' ' ; ; ; " y ' ' r