A week later Frank had become pretty familiar with his duties. Besides being “manager of properties,” he was the prompter, and he found plenty of work.
He took hold of the new work readily, and Barnaby Haley soon became satisfied that he had made no mistake in engaging him.
The company was “on the road,” playing one-night stands, having abandoned the larger cities.
It was a case of hustle day after day. The moment the show was over at night everything had to be picked up and packed for the morning train.
Frank soon became familiar with all the stuff, so that he knew just where everything belonged, and this enabled him to do the packing swiftly.
A certain amount of special scenery was carried for the piece, and that was the most difficult to handle.
As soon as Merry had taken care of the properties, he was expected to lend his aid in getting the scenery ready for shipment, and thus it came about that he seldom got to bed before one or two o’clock in the morning.
Then it was necessary for him to be up early to see that everything got off right, and, immediately on arriving at a destination, he had to attend to the getting of the baggage to the theater.
Arriving at the theater, he was required to have the trunks placed in the proper dressing rooms, the people who played the leading parts always being allotted by the stage-manager to the most convenient, commodious and handy rooms.
Sometimes the assignment of dressing rooms caused no small amount of ill feeling, but Frank tried to keep things as pleasant as possible.