"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."