I stood listening and looking on and fairly sizzling with hot desire to speak, but dared not take the liberty, I stood in such awe of my elders. Presently the "old-man" turned and, noticing my eagerness, laughingly said: "Well, what is it, Clara? you'll have a fit if you don't ease your mind with speech."

"Oh, Uncle Dick," I answered, my words fairly tripping over each other in my haste. "I have a picture home, I cut it out of a paper, it's a picture of a great castle, with towers and moats and things, and on the outer walls there are men with spears and shields, and they seem to be looking for the enemy, and, Uncle Dick, the banner is floating over the high tower!"

"Where it ought to be," interpolated the old gentleman, who was English.

"So," I went on, "don't you think it ought to be read: 'Hang out our banners! on the outward walls'—the outward walls, you know, is where the lookout are standing—'the cry—is still, they come!'"

A general laugh followed my excited explanation, but Uncle Dick patted me very kindly on the shoulder, and said: "Good girl! you stick to your picture—it's right and so are you. Many people read the line that way, but you have worked it out for yourself, and that's a good plan to follow."

And I swelled and swelled, it seemed to me, I was so proud of the gentle old man's approval. But that same night I came quite wofully to grief. I had been one of the crowd of "witches"; I had also had my place at that shameless papier-maché banquet given by Macbeth to his tantalized guests, and then, being off duty, was, as usual, planted in the entrance, watching the acting of the grown-up and the grown-great. Lady Macbeth was giving the sleep-walking scene. Her method was of the old, old school. She spoke at almost the full power of her lungs, throughout that mysterious, awe-inspiring sleep-walking scene. It jarred upon my feelings—I could not have told why, but it did. I believed myself alone, and when the memory-haunted woman roared out: "Yet, who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" I remarked, sotto voce: "Did you expect to find ink in him?"

A sharp "ahem!" right at my shoulder told me I had been overheard, and I turned to face—oh, horror! the stage-manager. He glared angrily at me, and began: "Since when have the ladies of the ballet taken to criticising the work of the stars?"

Humbly enough, I said: "I beg your pardon, sir, I was just talking to myself, that was all."

But he went on: "Oh, you would not criticize a reading, unless you could better it—so pray favor us with your ideas on this speech!"

Each sneering word cut me to the heart. Tears filled my eyes. I struggled hard to keep them from falling, while I just murmured: "I beg your pardon!" Again he demanded my reading, saying they were not "too old to learn," and in sheer desperation, I exclaimed: "I was only speaking to myself, but I thought Lady Macbeth was amazed at the quantity of blood that flowed from the body of such an old man—for when you get old, you know, sir, you don't have so much blood as you used to, and I only just thought, that as the 'sleeping men were laced,' and the knives 'smeared,' and her hands 'bathed' with it, she might have perhaps whispered: 'Yet, who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?' I didn't mean an impertinence!" and down fell the tears, for I could not talk and hold them back at the same time.