“No use,” she said. “I’m too old now.”
“Too old! Why, how old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Only eighteen?”
“That’s enough. Most girls are ready to leave school when they’re that old.”
Frank did not tell her, but he had fancied that she was twenty-three or twenty-four. He now realized that it was the life she had led that had made her seem so much older than she was in truth.
Life on the stage in cheap dramatic companies that play one-night stands is hard at best; but Cassie’s life had been particularly hard on account of her father, who had neglected and abused her when he drank.
For all of this neglect and abuse, Merry believed old Dan Lee really loved his daughter, for, when the man was sober, he was proud of Cassie, being tender and considerate in all his actions toward her.
Old Dan was very jealous of her. He believed her too good to “tie up” to a common ham-fatter, and so he had blocked the game of every cheap actor who tried to show her particular attentions. He believed that, some day, she would be able to make a “good match,” for other men must see in her all the fine qualities that were so evident to him.
Thus it came about that the girl did not dare let her father know there was a love affair between herself and Roscoe Havener, the stage-manager, for, although Havener had not seen his legal wife for four years, he was not divorced, and the entire company knew it.