Page:Wilson - Merton of the Movies (1922).djvu/291

 everybody's part as well as his own, and that slowed him. They put him on in Waco, and the manager was laid up, so they told him that after the third act he was to go out and announce the bill for the next night, and he learned that speech, too.

"He got on fine till the big scene in the third act. Then he went blooey because that was as far as he'd learned, so he just left the scene cold and walked down to the foots and bowed and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for your attendance here this evening and to-morrow night we shall have the honour of presenting Lady Audley's Secret.'

"With that he gave a cold look to the actors back of him that were gasping like fish, and walked off. And he was like you in another way because his real name was Eddie Duffy, and the lovely stage name he'd picked out was Clyde Maltravers."

"Well, Clifford Armytage is out, then," Merton announced, feeling that he had now buried a part of his dead self in a grave where Beulah Baxter, the wonder-woman, already lay interred. Still, he was conscious of a certain relief. The stage name had been bothersome.

"It ain't as if you had a name like mine," the girl went on. "I simply had to have help."

He wondered what her own name was. He had never heard her called anything but the absurd and undignified "Flips." She caught the question he had looked.

"Well, my honest-to-God name is Sarah Nevada Montague; Sarah for Ma and Nevada for Reno where Ma had to stop off for me—she was out of the company two weeks—and if you ever tell a soul I'll have the law on you. That was a fine way to abuse a helpless baby, wasn't it?"

"But Sarah is all right. I like Sarah."

"Do you, Kid?" She patted his hand. "All right, then, but it's only for your personal use."

"Of course the Nevada" he hesitated. "It does sound kind of like a geography lesson or something. But I think I'll call you Sarah, I mean when we're alone."