"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."