CHAPTER IV.
SILAS JOHNSON’S PROPOSAL.
Ten minutes later, when Dollie Marlowe emerged from the private door, her face was flushed and her eyes were blazing.
“The whole thing was a hoax!” she whispered over and over. “That man lured us all there for no purpose but to insult us.”
“I guess that is right,” said a voice at Dollie’s side.
The young girl looked around quickly and recognized the consumptive.
“I got tired of waiting,” went on the girl, “besides, I had a presentiment that the thing was all a hoax, but just for the joke of the thing, do tell me what he said to you.”
There was a tone in her voice that awakened Dollie’s sympathy. It was plain that the girl was both discouraged and disappointed.
“He told me he would make an actress of me, put me on the stage, make me famous, and all that, but he expected me to pay him for my tuition. The idiot! As if I had any money to spend that way,” cried Dollie, indignantly.
“Is that all he said?” asked the other girl, slyly. “I don’t believe you’d be so mad if that had been his only proposition.”
Dollie’s anger was so violent that she was glad to relieve it, and the young girl looked so sympathetic that she didn’t mind telling her.