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A Rube Aphrodite
47
I could see myself plated with Aphrodite mixture, and I had to laugh. I had been holding in, and now a hundred held laughs burst from me.
“I know what you’re laughin’ at — it’s the rube way I talk,” said Mildred, without sorrow, without anger, resignedly. "I’ve tried to talk like people, but somehow I jes’ can’t.”
"She talks just the way she did the day she came into the studios in New York and we all called her ‘Taters’ ; but I wouldn’t have her change it for anything in the world,” declared the doting Georgiana, whose sentiments were my own. “She was the loveliest model for the nude those artists had ever seen. No wonder Mr. Gest stopped looking — he’d looked at hundreds — when he saw Mildred. — Oh, Mildred, do you ever hear any more of Madame Hermes’ suit against you?”
“No,” said Mildred, “and I’m still infringing.”
“What are you infringing ?” the curse of curiosity impelled me to ask.
“Oh, it’s a long story,” Mildred sighed, “but I’ll try to shorten it. This Madame Hermes was a ‘livin' picture’ producer. Mr. Gest engaged her to put the mixture on me. When we closed in New York for the summer she wanted me to go to work for her at Coney Island — wanted me to exhibit myself as the ‘Original Statue of Aphrodite’ somewhere between Hazel Hepner, the bearded lady, and Zip, the wild man. And I said no; and she said then she wouldn’t make me up next season. I said I’d put the stuff on myself. Then Madame Hermes got red in the eye and she cried:
“ ‘See that that stuff is all you do put on. For that court-plaster is my patent, and if I catch you using it I’ll sue you for infringement.’ ”
“Do you think she really has got a patent on it?”