“But there’s—there’s no other way to become acquainted with them, is there, Mr. Merriwell?”
“I fancy you will be better off if you do not know them.”
“I must know them! How can I ever get onto the stage unless I do? Now, tell me that, Frank Merriwell!”
“My dear Miss Dow, is it absolutely necessary for you to go on the stage?”
“I don’t know that it’s absolutely necessary, but I want to do so. It must be just perfectly lovely to play parts and sing and get flowers and wear diamonds!”
“That is how it seems to you. You know nothing of the work and worry of the life, nothing of its uncertainties, its privations. You see the actors dancing and singing and being merry before the footlights, and it seems ‘perfectly lovely.’ You may not know that in hundreds of cases the actresses send themselves the flowers they receive. Their diamonds glitter, but stage diamonds are paste, as a rule. I have no time to tell you all about the hollow mockeries of the life, but I have an opportunity to warn you, if you have a home, to stick by your home, and forever give up the notion of becoming an actress.”
The girl pouted.
“Oh, I don’t like you, Mr. Merriwell!” she cried. “I didn’t think you, an actor, would talk like that! That is the way papa talks.”
“Your father is right. Listen to him. I believe you said in your note that your mother is dead?”
“Yes.”