The Twenty-Fourth of June Part 18

"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!'"

Pa.s.sersby 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 a.s.sumed bl.u.s.ter 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 cla.s.s. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 bl.u.s.tering; 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 princ.i.p.als. Of course there's n.o.body 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. "n.o.body 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 st.i.tches 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 pa.s.sed a figure she knew, and turned to bestow a girlish bow and smile.