exceptional
embroidery; and, though I laugh now, I had then many an hour of genuine
happiness, furnishing this imaginary home and refuge for the mother I
loved!

CHAPTER FOURTH

I am Led into the Theatre--I Attend Rehearsals--I am Made Acquainted
with the Vagaries of Tights.

I was approaching my thirteenth birthday when it came about that a
certain ancient boarding-house keeper--far gone in years--required
someone to assist her, someone she could trust entirely and leave in
charge for a month at a time; and I, not being able to read the future,
was greatly chagrined because my mother accepted the offered situation. I
was always happiest when she found occupation in a house where there was
a library, for people were generally kind to me in that respect and gave
me the freedom of their shelves, seeing that I was reverently careful of
all books; but in a boarding-house there would be no library, and my
heart sank as we entered the gloomy old building.

No, there were no books, but among the boarders there were two or three
actors and two actresses--a mother and a daughter. The mother played the
"first old women"; the daughter, only a year or two older than I was,
played, I was told, "walking-ladies," though what that meant I could not
imagine.

The daughter (Blanche) liked me, while I looked upon her with awe, and
wondered why she even noticed me. She was very wilful, she would not
study anything on earth save her short parts. She had never read a book
in her life. When I was home from school I told her stories by the hour,
and she would say: "You ought to be in a theatre--you could act!"

And then I would be dumb for a long time, because I thought she was
making fun of me. One day I was chewing some gum she gave me--I was not
chewing it very nicely, either--and my mother boxed my ears, and Blanche
said: "You ought to be in a theatre--you could chew all the gum you liked
there!"

And just then my mother was so cruelly overworked, and the spring came in
with furious heat, and I felt so big and yet so helpless--a great girl of
thirteen to be worked for by another--and the humiliation seemed more
than I could bear, and I locked myself in our dreary cupboard of a room,
and flung myself upon my knees, and in a passion of tears tried to make a
bargain with my God! I meant no irreverence--I was intensely religious. I
did not see the enormity of the act--I only knew that I suffered, and
that God could help me