“Oh, Miss Caspian, just a minute. I’m going to send a manuscript over to you to-day; it’s a play we’re expecting to put on in New York. And, oh—I may want to do some Shakspere, too. You’d better be up on Juliet.” He looked at her piercingly. “I’m not so sure that you re not the very person I’ve been waiting for.”
Jean flew back delightedly to the hotel, and two days later the still grumbling theatrical party left for New York in Guy Norman’s private cars.
In Mrs. Bunting’s boarding-house, where “the meals made up for the rooms,” Jean Caspian wrote to her chum, “back home” in Wisconsin:
Dear Clara:
Spent my first day in New York traveling the streets, trying to get some of “the road” worn off. You can’t imagine what a hole it made in my salary before I became a real New Yorker again. How I laughed at those hats we bought in Davenport when I caught a glimpse of myself on Broadway!
I dropped in to see Dell yesterday. She’s still haunting the agencies. Poor Dell! Went with her to Smiley’s, and it certainly seemed like old times. I even heard some one ask Smiley, “How’s the baby?” Remember how you used to make those tender inquiries in vain for six months?
Oh, those pathetic whipped-cur faces! Two thousand actors out of work this season, they say! We are lucky, aren’t we?
Yours gleefully,
JEAN C.
P.S. Hear we’re to open in Pittsburgh, the fifteenth. Come on soon and take in a few plays. J. C.
P.P.S. Wait till you see my white satin “Countess” costume! You’ll see where four hundred of my good dollars have gone. I’m certainly all ready for my new salary. J. C.