“Nice?” There was no concealing the disgust in Tavia’s voice. “It was awful, Dorothy! It was a regular barn-storming company! Playing one-night stands! We never had good houses. They said it was because it was the summer season, but I guess it was because the play was so poor. We did not get all our salaries and half the time didn’t have enough to eat. Then the show ‘busted’!”
“Did you have a good—part I believe they call it?”
“A good part? Say, Doro,” and Tavia actually seemed her old self again. “I had an idea I was to be Lady Rossmore, or at least one of the family.”
“Weren’t you?”
“I should say not! I was Lucy, the parlor maid, and the only time I was on the stage was when I was dusting the make-believe furniture. And as for my lines—well, I had a very heavy and strong thinking part.”
“Oh, Tavia!”
“That’s my theatrical experience,” answered Tavia. “Oh, Doro, I’m very miserable,” she wailed again.
“Never mind, dear. Dry your eyes now, you’re all right. I’m—Oh, I’m so happy that I have found you again. Come back to the station with me. I have some one else to bring home, too. Urania, the Gypsy girl—you remember her at Glenwood, I guess—she has been trying to see the world and she caught too big a glimpse of it. Poor girl, she is quite sick and miserable.”
Then, as they hurried from the park, Dorothy told Tavia of the trouble she had to get Urania on the train. A happy thought came to Tavia, and, with a bright smile she said:
“I have it! In this little hand bag—all the baggage I have left by the way—I have a very quiet suit. I used it in the play, for sometimes I had to take two or three parts if one of the other girls was ill, but they never amounted to much—the parts I mean. We can put this suit on Urania.”