“I thought everybody knew me,” she said. “I’m Bonnie May.”
He perceived that, despite the lightness of her manner, she was truly ashamed of her mistake. It seemed to him that she was regretfully slipping back into her own world, her own realm of thought. And she was speedily becoming, to him, not a pert minx, but just a lonely, friendly little child.
“I don’t believe I know just where you are appearing now,” he said. For the moment he could not do less than appear to be interested in her.
She moved uncomfortably in her chair. “I’m not doing anything just now,” she said. Then her eyes brightened. “The manager skipped just when business was picking up. We had to close our season. Such a jay town we closed in. The people wanted to hold our trunks!”
“But they didn’t?”
“No, we gave one more performance, so we could square up.”
“Why shouldn’t you have kept on giving performances?”
“Of course, you wouldn’t understand. You see, the manager was our Simon Legree, and we couldn’t do without him.”
“But that last performance——”
“The constable who came to hold our things said he’d take the part of Simon Legree just once, so we could pay our bills and get out of town. He said there was sure to be a crowd if it was known that he would be one of the actors. He said he’d always wanted to be an actor, but that his parents thought it would be sinful for him to act.”