Life and Lillian Gish (1932)

"Her First False Step" 45 mechanics. Delicate mechanics. She enjoyed taking a clock apart and putting it together again. A clock that did not go was her delight. Once that winter, when they were all together, a clock in their room had gone out of commission. Mary Gish examined it, then set to work. In a brief time she had it on the operating table, the pieces here and there. Dorothy's deep interest may have had something to do with the fact that when she came to assemble them, two insignificant bits seemed to be missing. Never mind, the clock would go without them. It would go, but with a gay indifference to time, and every little while made queer noises in its inside. Lillian and Dorothy, in bed in that room, laughed themselves to sleep, listening to its complaints. They found amusement where they could — the situation was so often barren enough. Once, remembering, Lillian said: "Sometimes the theatre was very poor, and the dressingrooms nearly always bad (even to this day they could be better) . Some were worse than others. At a theatre in Chicago, a theatre of the second or third class, a good way out, the dressing-rooms were in a kind of cellar. There was water on the floor — we had to walk on boards. I remember the big, black water-bugs. Mother had to shake out our dresses, before we put them on. "The Gerry Society was very strict in Chicago. We hardly dared to show ourselves outside the theatre and hotel. Four or five years later, when I was perhaps twelve, and we were there again, Mother put me into long skirts and high heels, so that I could look sixteen, and reduce the risk. I felt very proud to be grown-up in that sudden way."