"THE TAMING OF THE SHREW"
"School again, Rob! Don't you hate it?"
"No, of course I don't hate it. I'm much, much happier when I'm teaching
Ethel Revell to forget her important young self and remember the part
she is supposed to play, than I am when I am merely dusting my room or
driving downtown on errands."
As she spoke Roberta pushed into place the last hairpin in the close and
trim arrangement of her dark hair, briefly surveyed the result with a
hand-glass, and rose from her dressing-table. Ruth, at a considerably
earlier stage of her dressing, regarded her sister's head with interest.
"I can always tell the difference between a school day and another day,
just by looking at your hair," she observed, sagely.
"How, Miss Big Eyes, if you please?"
"You never leave a curl sticking out, on school days. They sometimes
work out before night, but that's not your fault. You look like one of
Jane Austen's heroines, now."
Roberta laughed a laugh of derision. "Miss Austen's heroines undoubtedly
had ringlets hanging in profusion on either side of their oval faces."
"Yes, but I mean every hair of theirs was in order, and so are yours."
"Thank you. Only so can I command respect when I lecture my girls on
their frenzied coiffures. Oh, but I'm thankful I can live at home and
don't have to spend the nights with them! Some of them are dears, but to
be responsible for them day and night would harrow my soul. Hook me up,
will you, Rufus, please?"
"You look just like a smooth feathered bluebird in this," commented
Ruth, as she obediently fastened the severely simple school dress of
dark blue, relieved only by its daintily fresh collar and cuffs of
embroidered white lawn.
"I mean to. Miss Copeland wouldn't have a fluffy, frilly teacher in her
school--and I don't blame her. It's difficult enough to train fluffy,
frilly girls to like simplicity, even if one's self is a model of
plainness and repose."
"And you're truly glad to go back, after this lovely vacation? Shouldn't
you sort of like to keep on typing for Uncle Calvin, with Mr. Richard
Kendrick sitting close by, looking at you over the top of his book?"
Roberta wheeled, answering with vehemence: "I should say not, you
romantic infant! When I work I want to work with workers, not with
drones! A person who can only dawdle over his task is of no use at all.
How Uncle Calvin gets on with a mere imitation of a secretary, I can't
possibly see. Why, Ted himself could cover more ground in a morning!"
"I don't think you do him justice," Ruth objected, with all the dignity
of her sixteen years in evidence. "Of course he couldn't work as well
with you in the room--he isn't used to it. And you are--you certainly
are, awfully nice to look at, Rob."
"Nonsense! It's lucky you're going back to school yourself, child, to
get these sentimental notions out of your head. Come, vacation's over!
Let's not sigh for more dances; let's go at our work with a will. I've
plenty before me. The school play comes week after next, and I haven't
as good material this year as last. How I'm ever going to get Olivia
Cartwright to put sufficient backbone into her _Petruchio_, I don't
know. I only wish I could play him myself!"
"Rob! Couldn't you?"
"It's never done. My part is just to coach and coach, to go over the
lines a thousand times and the stage business ten thousand, and then to
stay behind the scenes and hiss at them: 'More spirit! More life! Throw
yourself into it!' and then to watch them walk it through like puppets!
Well, _The Taming of the Shrew_ is pretty stiff work for amateurs, no
doubt of that--there's that much to be said. Breakfast time, childie!
You must hurry, and I must be off."
Half an hour later Ruth watched her sister walk away down the street
with Louis, her step as lithe and vigorous as her brother's. Ruth
herself was accustomed to drive with her father to the school which she
attended--a rival school, as it happened, of the fashionable one at
which Roberta taught. She was not so strong as her sister, and a
two-mile walk to school was apt to overtire her. But Roberta chose to
walk every day and all days, and the more stormy the weather the surer
was she to scorn all offers of a place beside Ruth in the brougham.
Louis's comment on the return of his sister to her work at Miss
Copeland's school was much like that of Ruth. "Sorry vacation's over,
Rob? That's where I have the advantage of you. The office never closes
for more than a day; therefore I'm always in training."
"That's an advantage, surely enough. But I'm ready to go back. As I was
telling Ruth this morning, I'm anxious to know whether Olivia Cartwright
has forgotten her lines, and whether she's going to be able to infuse a
bit of life into her _Petruchio_. This trying to make a schoolgirl play
a big man's part--"
"You could do it, yourself," observed Louis, even as Ruth had done.
"And shouldn't I love to! I'm just longing to stride about the stage in
_Petruchio's_ boots."
"I'll wager you are. I'd like to see you do it. But the part of
_Katherine_ would be the thing for you--fascinating shrew that you could
be."
"This--from a brother! Yes, I'd like to play _Katherine_, too. But give
me the boots, if you please. Do you happen to remember Olivia
Cartwright?"
"Of course I do. And a mighty pretty and interesting girl she is. I
should think she might make a _Petruchio_ for you."
"I thought she would. But the boots seem to have a devastating effect.
The minute she gets them on--even in imagination, for we haven't had a
dress rehearsal yet--her voice grows softer and her manner more
lady-like. It's the funniest thing I ever knew, to hear her say the
lines--
"'What is this? mutton?...
'Tis burnt, and so is all the meat.
What dogs are these? Where is the rascal cook?
"How durst you, villains, bring it from the dresser,
And serve it thus to me that love it not?
There, take it to you, trenchers, cups and all,
You heedless joltheads and unmannered slaves!'"
Passersby along the street beheld a young man consumed with mirth as
Louis Gray heard these stirring words issuing from his sister's pretty
mouth in a clever imitation of the schoolgirl _Petruchio's_ "lady-like"
tones.
"Now speak those lines as you would if you wore the boots," he urged,
when he had recovered his gravity.
Roberta waited till they were at a discreet distance from other
pedestrians, then delivered the lines as she had already spoken them for
her pupil twenty times or more, with a spirit and temper which gave them
their character as the assumed bluster they were meant to picture.
"Good!" cried Louis. "Great! But you see, Sis, you have learned the
absolute control of your voice, and that's a thing few schoolgirls have
mastered. Besides, not every girl has a throat like yours."
"I mean to be patient," said Roberta soberly. "And Olivia has really a
good speaking voice. It's the curious effect of the imaginary boots that
stirs my wonder. She actually speaks in a higher key with them on than
off. But we shall improve that, in the fortnight before the play. They
are really doing very well, and our _Katherine_--Ethel Revell--is going
to forget herself completely in her part, if I can manage it. In spite
of the hard work I thoroughly enjoy the rehearsing of the yearly
play--it's a relief from the routine work of the class. And the girls
appreciate the best there is, in the great writers and dramatists, as
you wouldn't imagine they could do."
"On the whole, you would rather be a teacher than an office
stenographer?" suggested Louis, with a touch of mischief in his tone.
"You know, I've always been a bit disappointed that you didn't come into
our office, after working so hard to make an expert of yourself."
"That training wasn't wasted," defended Roberta. "I'm able to make
friends with my working girls lots better on account of the stenography
and typewriting I know. And I may need that resource yet. I'm not at all
sure that I mean to be a teacher all my days."
"I'm very sure you'll not," said her brother, with a laughing glance,
which Roberta ignored. It was a matter of considerable amusement to her
brothers the serious way in which she had set about being independent.
They fully approved of her decision to spend her time in a way worth the
while, but when it came to planning for a lifetime--there were plenty of
reasons for skepticism as to her needing to look far ahead. Indeed, it
was well known that Roberta might have abandoned all effort long ago,
and have given any one of several extremely eligible young men the
greatly desired opportunity of taking care of her in his own way.
The pair separated at a street corner, and, as it happened, Louis heard
little more about the progress of the school rehearsals for _The Taming
of the Shrew_ until the day before its public performance--if a
performance could be called public which was to be given in so private a
place as the ballroom in the home of one of the wealthiest patrons of
the school, the audience composed wholly of invited guests, and
admission to the affair for others extremely difficult to procure on any
ground whatever.
Appearing at the close of the final rehearsal to escort his sister
home--for the hour, like that of all final rehearsals, was late--Louis
found a flushed and highly wrought Roberta delivering last instructions
even as she put on her wraps.
"Remember, Olivia," he heard her say to a tall girl wrapped in a long
cloak which evidently concealed male trappings, "I'm not going to tone
down my part one bit to fit yours. If I'm stormy you must be blustering;
if I'm furious you must be fierce. You can do it, I know."
"I certainly hope so, Miss Gray," answered a none-too-confident voice.
"But I'm simply frightened to death to play opposite you."
"Nonsense! I'll stick pins into you--metaphorically speaking," declared
Roberta. "I'll keep you up to it. Now go straight to bed--no sitting up
to talk it over with Ethel--poor child! Good-night, dear, and don't you
dare be afraid of me!"
"Are you going to play the boots, after all?" Louis queried as he and
Roberta started toward home, walking at a rapid pace, as usual after
rehearsals.
"I wish I were, if I must play some part. No, it's _Katherine_. Ethel
Revell has come down with tonsilitis, just at the last minute. It was to
be expected, of course--somebody always does it. But I did hope it
wouldn't be one of the principals. Of course there's nobody who could
possibly get up the part overnight except the coach, so I'm in for it.
And the worst of it is that unless I'm very careful I shall
over-_Katherine_ my _Petruchio_! If Olivia will only keep her voice
resonant! She can stride and gesture pretty well now, but highly
dramatic moments always cause her to raise her key--and then the boots
only serve to make the effect grotesque."
"Never mind; unconscious humour is always interesting to the audience.
And we shall all be there to see your _Katherine_. I had thought of
cutting the performance for a rather important address, but nothing
would induce me to miss my sister as the _Shrew_."
Roberta laughed. "Nobody will question my fitness for the part, I fear.
Well, if I teach expression, in a girls' school, I must take the
consequences, and be willing to express anything that comes along."
If Roberta had expected any sympathy from her family in the exigency of
the hour, she was disappointed. Instead of condoling with her, the
breakfast-table hearers of the news, next morning, were able only to
congratulate themselves upon the augmented interest the school play
would now have for Roberta's friends, confident that the presence of one
clever actress of maturer powers would compensate for much
amateurishness in the others. Ruth, young devotee of her sister, was
delighted beyond measure with the prospect, and joyfully spent the day
taking necessary stitches in the apparel Roberta was to wear,
considerable alteration being necessary to adapt the garments intended
for the slim and girlish _Katherine_ of Ethel Revell's proportions to
the more perfectly rounded lines of her teacher.
Late in the afternoon, something was needed to complete Roberta's
preparations which could be procured only in a downtown shop, and Ruth
volunteered to order the brougham--now on runners--and go down for it.
She left the house alone, but she did not complete her journey alone,
for halfway down the two-mile boulevard she passed a figure she knew,
and turned to bestow a girlish bow and smile.
Richard Kendrick not only took off his hat but waved it with a gesture
of entreaty, as he quickened his steps, and Ruth, much excited by the
encounter, bade Thomas stop the horses.
"Would you take a passenger?" he asked as he came up; "unless, of
course, you're going to stop for some one else?"
"Do get in," she urged shyly. "No, I'm all alone--going on an errand."
"I guessed it--not the errand, but the being alone. You looked so small,
wrapped up in all these furs, I felt you needed company," explained
Richard, smiling down into the animated young face, with its delicate
colour showing fresh and fair in the frosty air. There was something
very attractive to the young man in this girl, who seemed to him the
embodiment of sweetness and purity. He never saw her without feeling
that he would have liked just such a little sister. He would have done
much to please her, quite as he had followed her suggestion about the
church-going on Christmas Day.
"I'm rushing down to find a scarf of a certain colour for Rob,"
explained Ruth, too full of her commission to keep it to herself. "You
see, she's playing _Katherine_ to-night. The girl who was to have played
it--Ethel Revell--is ill. Do you know any of Miss Copeland's girls?
Olivia Cartwright plays _Petruchio_."
"Olivia Cartwright? Is she to be in some play? She's a distant cousin of
mine."
"It's a school play--Miss Copeland's school, where Rob teaches, you
know. The play is to be in the Stuart Hendersons' ballroom." And Ruth
made known the situation to a listener who gave her his undivided
attention.
"Well, well,--seems to me I should have had an invitation for that
play," mused Richard, searching his memory. "I wish I'd had one. I
should like to see your sister act _Katherine_. I suppose it's quite
impossible to get one at this late hour?"
"I'm afraid so. It's really not at all strange that any one is left out
of the list of invitations," Ruth hastened to make clear. "You see, each
girl is allowed only six, and that usually takes just her family or
nearest friends. And if you are only a distant cousin of Olivia's--"
"It's not at all strange that she shouldn't ask me, for I'm afraid I've
neglected to avail myself of former invitations of hers," admitted
Richard, ruefully. "Too bad. Punishment for such neglect usually
follows--and I certainly have it now. I know the Stuart Hendersons,
though--I wonder--Never mind, Miss Ruth, don't look so sorry. You'll
tell me about it afterward, some time, won't you?"
"Indeed I will. Oh, it's been such an exciting day. Rob's been
rehearsing her lines all day--when she wasn't trying on. She says she
could have played _Petruchio_ much better, because she's had to coach
Olivia Cartwright for that part so much more than she's had to coach
Ethel for _Katherine_. But, then, she knows the whole play--she could
take any part. She would have loved to play _Petruchio_, though, on
account of the boots and the slashing round the stage the way he does.
But I think it's just as well, for _Katherine_ certainly slashes,
too--and Rob's not quite tall enough for _Petruchio_."
"I'm glad she plays _Katherine_," said Richard Kendrick decidedly. "I
can't imagine your sister in boots! I've no doubt, though, she'd make
them different from other boots--if she wore them!"
"Of course she would," agreed Ruth. Then she began to talk about
something else, for a bit of fear had come into her mind that Rob
wouldn't enjoy all this discussion of herself, if she should know about
it.
She was such an honest young person, however, that she had a good deal
of difficulty, when she had done her errand and was at home again, in
not telling Roberta of her meeting with Richard Kendrick. She did
venture to ask a question.
"Is Mr. Kendrick invited for to-night, Rob?"
"Not by me," Roberta responded promptly.
"He might be, by one of the girls, I suppose?"
"The girls invite whom they like. I haven't seen the list. I don't
imagine he would be on it. I hope not, certainly."
"Why? Don't you think he would enjoy it?"
"No, I do not. Musical comedies are probably more to his taste than
amateur productions of Shakespeare. But I'm not thinking about the
audience--the players are enough for me." Then, suddenly, an idea which
flashed into her mind caused her to turn and scan Ruth's ingenuous young
face.
"You haven't been inviting Mr. Kendrick yourself, Rufus?"
"Why, how could I?" But the girl flushed rosily in a way which betrayed
her interest. "I just--wondered."
"How did you come to wonder? Have you seen him?"
Ruth being Ruth, there was nothing to do but to tell Roberta of the
encounter with Richard. "He said he was glad you were to play
_Katherine_, because he couldn't imagine you in boots," she added,
hoping this news might appease her sister. But it did nothing of the
sort.
"As if it made the slightest difference to him! But if he feels that
way, I wish I were to wear the boots, and I wish he might be there to
see me do it. As it is, I hope Mrs. Stuart Henderson will be deaf to his
audacity, if he dares to ask an invitation. It would be quite like him!"
"I don't see why--" began Ruth.
But Roberta interrupted her. "There are lots of things you don't see,
little sister," said she, with a swift and impetuous embrace of the
slender form beside her. Then she turned, frowned, flung out her arm,
and broke into one of _Katherine's_ flaming speeches:
_"'Why, sir, I trust, I may have leave to speak:
And speak I will: I am no child, no babe:
Your betters have endured me say my mind
And if you cannot, best you stop your ears.'"_
"Oh, but you do have such a lovely voice!" cried Ruth. "You can't make
even the _Shrew_ sound shrewish--in her tone, I mean."
"Can't I, indeed? Wait till to-night! If your friend Mr. Kendrick is to
be there I'll be more shrewish than you ever dreamed--it will be a real
stimulus!"
Ruth shook her head in dumb wonder that any one could be so impervious
to the charms of the young man who so appealed to her youthful
imagination. Three hours afterward, when she turned in her chair, in the
Stuart Henderson ballroom, at the summons of a low voice in her ear, to
find Richard Kendrick in the row behind her, she wondered afresh what
there could possibly be about him to rouse her sister's antagonism. His
face was such an interesting one, his eyes so clear and their glance so
straightforward, his fresh colour so pleasant to note, his whole
personality so attractive, Ruth could only answer him in the happiest
way at her command with a subdued but eager: "Oh, I'm so glad you came!"
"That's due to Mrs. Cartwright's wonderful kindness. She's the mother of
_Petruchio_, you know," explained Richard, with a smiling glance at the
gorgeously gowned woman beside him, who leaned forward also to say to
Ruth:
"What is one to do with a sweetly apologetic young cousin who begs to be
allowed to come, at the last moment, to view his cousin in doublet and
hose? But I really didn't venture to tell Olivia. She would have fled
from the stage if she had guessed that cousin Richard, whom she greatly
admires, was to be here. I can only hope she will not hear of it till
the play is over."
"If his being here is going to make _Petruchio_ tremble more, and
_Katherine_ act naughtier, I shall feel dreadfully guilty," thought
Ruth. But somehow when the curtain went up she could not help being glad
that he was there, behind her.
Roberta had said much, in hours of relaxation after long and tense
rehearsals, of the difficulty of making schoolgirls forget themselves in
any part. It had been difficult, indeed, to train her pupils to speak
and act with naturalness in rôles so foreign to their experience. But
she had been much more successful than she had dared to believe, and her
own enthusiasm, her tireless drilling, above all her inspiring example
as she spoke her girls' lines for them and demonstrated to them each
telling detail of stage business, had done the work with astonishing
effect. The hardest task of all had been to find and develop a
satisfactory delineator of the difficult part of the _Tamer of the
Shrew_, but Roberta had persevered, even taking a journey of some hours
with Olivia Cartwright to have her see and study one of the greatest of
_Petruchios_ at two successive performances. She had succeeded in
stimulating Olivia to a real determination to be worthy of her teacher's
expressed belief in her, even to the mastering of her girlish tendency
to let her voice revert to a high-keyed feminine quality just when it
needed to be deepest and most stern.
The audience, as the play began, was in the customary benevolent mood of
audiences beholding amateur productions, ready to see good if possible,
anxious to show favour to all the young actors and to praise without
discrimination, aware of the proximity of proud fathers and mothers. But
this audience soon found itself genuinely interested and amused, and
with the first advent of the enchanting _Shrew_ herself became absorbed
in her personality and her fortunes quite as it might have been in those
of any talented actress of reputation.
To Ruth, sitting wide eyed and hot cheeked, her sister seemed the most
spirited and bewitching _Katherine_ ever played. Her shrewishness was
that of the wilful madcap girl who has never been crossed rather than
that of the inherently ill-tempered woman, and her every word and
gesture, her every expression of face and tone of voice, were worth
noting and watching. By no means finished work--as how should it be, in
a young teacher but few years out of school herself--it yet had an
originality and freshness of interpretation all its own, and the
applause which praised it was very spontaneous and genuine. Roberta had
been the joy of her class in college dramatics, and several of her
former classmates, in her audience to-night, gleefully told one another
that she was surpassing anything she had formerly done.
"It's simply superb, you know, don't you?--your sister's acting," said
Richard Kendrick's voice in Ruth's ear again at the end of the first
act, and she turned her burning cheek his way as she answered happily:
"It seems so to me--but then I'm prejudiced, you know."
"We're all prejudiced, when it comes to that--made so by this
performance. I'm pretty proud of my cousin _Petruchio_, too," he went
on, including Mrs. Cartwright at his side. "I'd no idea boots could be
so becoming to any girl--outside of a chorus. Olivia's splendid. Do you
suppose"--he was addressing Ruth again--"you and I might go behind the
scenes and tell them how we feel about it?"
"Oh, no, indeed, Mr. Kendrick," Ruth replied, much shocked. "It's lots
different, a girls' play like this, from the regular theatre. They'd be
so astonished to see you. Rob's told me, heaps of times, how they go
perfectly crazy after every act, and she has all she can do to keep them
cool enough for the next. She'd never forgive us. And besides, Olivia
Cartwright's not to know you're here, you know."
"That's true. I'd forgotten how disturbing my presence is supposed to
be," and Richard leaned back again to laugh with Mrs. Cartwright.
But, behind the scenes, the news had penetrated, nobody knew just how.
Roberta learned, to her surprise and distraction, that Richard Kendrick
was somehow a particularly interesting figure in the eyes of her young
players, and she speedily discovered that they were all more or less
excited at the knowledge that he was somewhere below the footlights.
Olivia, indeed, was immediately in a flutter, quite as her mother had
predicted, at the thought of Cousin Richard's eyes upon her in her
masculine attire; and Roberta, in the brief interval she could spare for
the purpose, had to take her sternly in hand. An autocratic _Katherine_
might, then, have been overheard addressing a flurried _Petruchio_, in a
corner:
"For pity's sake, child, who is he that you need be afraid of him? He's
no critic, I'll wager, and if he's your cousin he'll be sure to think
you act like a veteran, anyhow. Forget him, and go ahead. You're doing
splendidly. Don't you dare slump just because you're remembering your
audience!"
"Oh, of course I'll try, Miss Gray," replied an extremely feminine voice
from beneath _Petruchio's_ fierce mustachios. "But Richard Kendrick
really is awfully sort of upsetting, don't you know?"
"Of course I don't know," denied Roberta promptly. "As long as Miss
Copeland herself is pleased with us, nobody else matters. And Miss
Copeland is delighted--she sent me special word just now. So stiffen
your backbone, _Petruchio_, and make this next dialogue with me as rapid
as you know. Come back at me like flash-fire--don't lag a breath--we'll
stir the house to laughter, or know the reason why. Ready?"
Her firm hand on Olivia's arm, her bracing words in Olivia's ear, put
courage back into her temporarily stage-struck "leading man," and Olivia
returned to the charge determined to play up to her teacher without
lagging. In truth, Roberta's actual presence on the stage was proving a
distinct advantage to those of the players who had parts with her. She
warmed and held them to their tasks with the flash of her own eyes, not
to mention an occasional almost imperceptible but pregnant gesture, and
they found themselves somehow able to "forget the audience," as she had
so many times advised them to do, the better that she herself seemed so
completely to have forgotten it.
The work of the young actors grew better with each act, and at the end
of the fourth, when the curtain went down upon a scene which had been
all storm on the part of the players and all laughter on the part of the
audience, the applause was long and hearty. There were calls for the
entire cast, and when they had several times responded there was a
special and persistent demand for _Katherine_ herself, in the character
of the producer of the play. She refused it until she could no longer do
so without discourtesy; then she came before the curtain and said a few
winsome words of gratitude on behalf of her "company."
Ruth, staring up at her sister's face brilliant with the mingled
exertion and emotion of the hour, and thinking her the prettiest picture
there against the great dull-blue silk curtain of the stage she had ever
seen, had no notion that just behind her somebody was thinking the same
thing with a degree of fervour far beyond her own. Richard Kendrick's
heart was thumping vigorously away in his breast as he looked his fill
at the figure before the curtain, secure in the darkness of the house
from observation at the moment.
When he had first met this girl he had told himself that he would soon
know her well, would soon call her by her name. He wondered at himself
that he could possibly have fancied conquest of her so easy. He was not
a whit nearer knowing her, he was obliged to acknowledge, than on that
first day, nor did he see any prospect of getting to know her--beyond a
certain point. Her chosen occupation seemed to place her beyond his
reach; she was not to be got at by the ordinary methods of approach.
Twice he had called and asked for her, to be told that she was busy with
school papers and must be excused. Once he had ventured to invite her to
go with Mrs. Stephen and himself to a carefully chosen play and a
supper, but she had declined, gracefully enough--but she had declined,
and Mrs. Stephen also. He could not make these people out, he told
himself. Did they and he live in such different worlds that they could
never meet on common ground?
_The Taming of the Shrew_ came to a triumphant end; the curtain fell
upon the effective closing scene in which the lovely _Shrew_, become a
richly loving and tender wife, without, somehow, surrendering a particle
of her exquisite individuality, spoke her words of wisdom to other
wives. Richard smiled to himself as he heard the lines fall from
Roberta's lips. And beneath his breath he said:
"I don't see how you can bring yourself to say them, you modern girl.
You'd never let a real husband feel his power that way, I'll wager. If
you did--well--it would go to his head, I'm sure of that. What an idiot
I am to think I could ever make her look at me the way she looked even
at that schoolgirl _Petruchio_--with a clever imitation of devotion. O
Roberta Gray! But I'd rather worship you across the footlights than take
any other girl in my arms. And somehow--somehow I've got to make you at
least respect me. At least that, Roberta! Then--perhaps--more!"
At Ruth's side, when the play was ended, Richard hoped to attain at
least the chance to speak to Ruth's sister. The young players all
appeared upon the stage, the curtain being raised for the rest of the
evening, and the audience came up, group by group, to offer
congratulations and pour into gratified ears the praise which was the
reward of labour. Richard succeeded in getting by degrees into the
immediate vicinity of Roberta, who was continuously surrounded by happy
parents bent on presenting their felicitations. But just as he was about
to make his way to her side a diversion occurred which took her
completely away from him. A girl near by, who on account of physical
frailty had had a minor part, grew suddenly faint, and in a trice
Roberta had impressed into her service a strong pair of male arms,
nearer at hand than Richard's, and had had the slim little figure
carried behind the scenes, herself following.
Ten minutes later he learned from Ruth that Roberta had gone back to
Miss Copeland's school with the girl, recovered but weak.
"Couldn't anybody else have gone?" he inquired, considerable impatience
in his voice.
"Of course--lots of people could, and would. Only it's just like Rob to
seize the chance to get away from this, and not come back. You'll
see--she won't. She hates being patted on the back, as she calls it. I
never can see why, when people mean it, as I'm sure they do to-night.
She's the queerest girl. She never wants what you'd think she would, or
wants it the way other people do. But she's awfully dear, just the
same," Ruth hastened to add, fearful lest she seem to criticise the
beloved sister. "And somehow you don't get tired of her, the way you do
of some people. Perhaps that's just because she's different."
"I suspect it is," Richard agreed with conviction. Certainly, a girl who
would run away from such adulation as she had been receiving must be, he
considered, decidedly and interestingly "different." He only wished he
might hit upon some "different" way to pique her interest.