Dorothy as a “baby star” had been a success. It is true that her
attention sometimes wandered during a rather long speech, when she was
supposed to be listening, and Miss Warren devised a plan, something with
a jelly-bean in it, plainly visible to Dorothy, who knew if she looked
at it steadily, it would be slipped to her when the speech ended. Also,
there had been a night that she went to sleep, when she was supposed
only to be dead, and rolled off the narrow, improvised couch, nearly
breaking up the performance.
Dorothy’s first season closed rather late, when Lillian was already with
her mother, in New York. A telegram came that Dorothy, in care of the
Pullman conductor, was on her way to them. Mrs. Gish, anxious at the
thought of the little girl traveling alone, wild to see her, was at the
station long before train time. With Lillian she waited ... then at last
the train was there, and looking down the platform, they saw Dorothy—not
walking in charge of the conductor, but riding high on the shoulder of a
very large man, one of a delegation of Elks, who had been captured by
the child actress with sunlit, red-gold hair. They had heaped riches
upon her—her arms were full. A moment later, and her mother and Lillian
had her in their embrace.
“Oh, Dorothy,” said Lillian, “I’m a vegetarian!”
“That’s nothing,” said Dorothy, “I’m a Roman Catholic!”
VII
MARY PICKFORD IN THE SCENE
At the apartment, Dorothy found her family considerably increased. A
very nice lady was there, also two girls, somewhat older than herself,
named Gladys and Lottie, and a boy about her own age, named Jack, who
fell in love with her at sight. Their names were Smith, some day to
become Pickford, which is a later story.
It had come about in this wise: Lillian’s Aunt Alice Niles had severed
her engagement with the “Convict Stripes” Company, and had written to
say that she would leave it at Buffalo, and come to New York. The season
was not ended, but Mrs. Gish, not wishing to leave Lillian with a
stranger, wired Miss Niles to bring her in. The manager of the company,
remembering that young Gladys Smith had played the part in Toronto,
where the play had been called “The Little Red Schoolhouse,” promptly
arranged to have Gladys join the company in Buffalo. Mrs. Smith decided
to bring all the children to Buffalo, and after getting Gladys
established, to keep on with the other two, to New York.
The meeting between the two little girls, destined to become world
stars, was neither formal nor memorable. More than twenty years later,
in an article in _Photoplay_, Mary Pickford wrote:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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