This did not improve Hart’s temper.
Strings seized the opportunity to escape from his hiding-place to the stage.
“I say, you completely ruined my work,” said Hart. “The audience were rightly displeased.”
“With you, perhaps,” suggested Nell. “I did not observe the feeling.”
Hart could no longer control himself. “You vilely read those glorious lines:
“See how the gazing People crowd the Place;
All gaping to be fill’d with my Disgrace.
That Shout, like the hoarse Peals of Vultures rings,
When, over fighting Fields they beat their wings.”
“And how should I read them, dear master?” she asked demurely of her vainglorious preceptor.
“Like I read them, in sooth,” replied he, well convinced that his reading could not be bettered.
“Like you read them, in sooth,” replied Nell, meekly. She took the floor and repeated the lines with the precise action and trick of voice which Hart had used. Every “r” was well trilled; “gaping” was pronounced with an anaconda-look, as though she were about to swallow the theatre, audience and all; and, as she spoke the line, “When, over fighting Fields they beat their wings,” she raised her arms and shoulders in imitation of some barn-yard fowl vainly essaying flight and swept across the room, the picture of grace in ungracefulness.
“’Tis monstrous!” exclaimed Hart, bitterly, as he realized the travesty. “You cannot act and never could. I was a fool to engage you.”