Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI. Well a dramatic traveling company had come to San Diego called the Frederick Morgan Players, and one Wednesday afternoon, when Dorothy was playing hooky from school, as she attended the matinee. Well, the production that day was called The Tale of Two Cities, and the gentleman who portrayed the title role was Frederick Morgan himself. And Frederick Morgan
had the type of a personality that, as soon as he came out on the stage, everybody knew he was there, because he had the habit of walking on backwards so that the audience could not see his face, and as soon as he felt that they could hardly stand the suspense any longer, he would suddenly turn around quick and hold a pose. And Dorothy says when he did it, the thrill that went down her spine almost made her think that the back of her chair had been wired for electricity.
Well, Dorothy sat there like a trance and never took her eyes off the drama. And by the time Frederick Morgan had reached the last act, where he stood on the steps and said that he was doing a better thing than he had ever done by getting hanged, the whole subject of sex appeal had taken on quite a new aspect to Dorothy. And Dorothy says she decided that all of the things the deputy sheriff had tried on her that only made her squirm would be a horse of a different color
with that leading man in the role. So after the matinee, Dorothy went out and stood in the lobby to gaze at his photograph. And as fate would have it, it seems that Frederick Morgan also had quite a habit of hurrying out in the lobby after the matinee to loiter around his photograph. So when he saw Dorothy admiring it too, he realized that they had something that was common, and he gave her a kind word. And one thing led to another until Mr. Morgan invited Dorothy to
have a Coca-Cola in the back of a drug store and tell him her life. And from the moment he heard that Dorothy was raised in a carnival company with quite an acrobatic father, he had a fellow feeling, and he asked her if she would like to go back to that profession. And Dorothy was in such a seventh heaven of delight that she said yes to an offer of $12 a week. Well, Dorothy did not even have to bother to run away from home because the deputy sheriff convalesced. But his spirits never came
back, and he obeyed everything his bleach-blonde secretary told him to the letter. So when she told him that Dorothy's heart was set on a career, he held a conversation with Dorothy and said that the way things had turned out, he could not do as he wished anyway, so he would not try to stop her. And Dorothy left the only refined home she ever had to move into the kind of a rooming house that charges actors $7 a week. And two days after she left, Dorothy noted a headline in the San Diego
Union which said, Deputy Sheriff Wins Secretary After Whirlwind Courtship. And that was how Dorothy threw away the opportunity of becoming a wealthy gentleman's bride, to start rehearsing the role of an extra girl in a bar room scene of a play called On the Yukon. Well, things went on until the following week, when they started to produce a prominent Broadway success, where Frederick Morgan portrayed the role of a light-hearted Irishman of the tenor type, who could not keep
from kissing every girl he passed. And he gave Dorothy the role of a girl that he passed in the second act. Well, all week at rehearsal, Mr. Morgan did not bother to perform the business, but the day the dress rehearsal arrived, he started to put in the feeling. And when he did, there was no doubt left in Dorothy's mind that she liked it. And it seems that Mr. Morgan himself suddenly started to look at Dorothy in a new light, and the result was that both of them
highly enjoyed the engagement. But by the time they had played that second act for a few performances, they finally reached a point where something had to be done. So after the show on Wednesday night, Mr. Morgan invited Dorothy to accompany him to a lunch wagon for a hamburger sandwich. And Dorothy seemed to note that when Mr. Morgan gave the waiter their order, he told him to leave out the onions. Well, after they finished their sandwiches, Mr. Morgan told
Dorothy that he had something to say, so she had better come up to his apartment. So Dorothy went. And when he got Dorothy up there, he started to tell her the story of his life. And it seems that, in reality, he had a wife, but an artist cannot marry, so he had to send her back where he got her from, because an artist must use all of his feelings to develop his temperament by. And then he told Dorothy that she would probably turn out to be an artist herself,
as soon as she got her temperament developed and found out about life. And he said that he himself would be willing to teach her about life and gave her all his aid. And he told her it was really quite a large opportunity for a girl like her when society women with strings of pearls were after it. So after he finished his recommendation, he asked Dorothy whether she would like to go home or take off her things and stay a while. So Dorothy took off her things.
End of chapter 6
