That is what started the trouble, and that night when The Girl went up to her room she packed a dress-suit case, putting in her grease paints first, of course, and then she penned a neat little note of farewell forever to her parents, after which she waited until the house was quiet and then slipped out as quietly as a burglar. She had enough money to make the breakaway and keep her about thirty days, by the end of which time she figured she would have a job at about fifty per week, with traveling expenses and Pullman car paid by the manager.
She had a roseate view of life, and she thought that as soon as she hit the big burg the managers would be falling over each other trying to get her to sign a contract. She didn’t know that making a hit in a little show given by the Golden Rod Society for the Supplying of Vegetables to the Cannibal Tribes of Africa was quite a different thing to going on the professional stage, and she imagined if she could do well in the part of Betsey, the Romp, in “Who Killed Cock Robin,” she could do equally well on the stage of any big theatre.
She had as much hope as a piece of Swiss cheese has holes when she climbed aboard the sleeping car which was scheduled to leave for New York at 1 A. M., but when she landed in the cold, gray dawn a good part of it had gone and had left her a trifle weak in the knees, which, by the way, is a decided symptom of weakness.
It took her just two hours to find a boarding house, and until the next day to get her nerve back. It was only because of her youth that it came back at all. She got a list of the names of managers and started out to do business, but no one seemed to want any amateur soubrettes from Philadelphia. By two o’clock there was nothing that looked like a job, but she had received eleven invitations to go out to lunch from eleven different genials who didn’t seem to want to talk business; who were inclined to be affectionate and who called her “My Dear” in every other sentence.
That night she went to a vaudeville show, and she was so impressed with the ease with which the turns were pulled off that she concluded she would do an act of her own. That is how it happened that the day after she forsook the legitimate for the variety, and knocked at the office doors of a different species of managers. Very busy fellows these were, too, and she got her dismissal in almost every case with startling rapidity.
Here is a sample of the dialogue:
“Where have you worked before?”
“I have never been on the professional stage, but I played the part of a soubrette in amateur shows in Philadelphia, and all my friends told me that——”
“But have you an act of your own?”
“No, not yet, but——”