The Goldwyn Studio Co., having arranged my reservations for me, sent a
car to take me to the 8 P.M. train for San Francisco.
When the hotel porter shouted down the line of parked cars: “Goldwyn
Studio Car” the crowd of dinner arrivals simply stood still and stared.
I had my parrot “General Baragan” on my shoulder and I stepped into
the car with the self-consciousness of a recognized prominent film star!
On the train I did as directed by my hosts-to-be: I sought out the
director of the train and told him “the Lark” would stop in the
morning at Burlingame. I hadn’t a notion where or what Burlingame was,
except that my friends lived there, and the train was to be stopped.
The director looked at me, in a curious way, as though I were a poor
lunatic suffering from hallucination. He had been, he said, on the
train for 25 years and it never yet had stopped at Burlingame. However,
the train did stop there in the morning and deposited me and Dick and
Louise and the parrot with all our luggage in the middle of the track
and hurriedly sped away. Then Constance Tobin, whom I had not seen
for 15 years and who had been a school-mate of mine at the convent in
Paris, appeared with her husband to greet me.