CHAPTER V
"I hope, Elsie, your friend wasn't in pain?" Mr. Middleton inquired with concern shortly after they were established in the train for Enderby.
"Oh, no," the girl assured him, trying, but vainly, to add "Uncle John."
"I thought she might be suffering from toothache or neuralgia, wearing that scarf about her face on such a warm day—particularly as she frowned and screwed her mouth in a rather distressed way," he explained.
Elsie smiled. Indeed she almost laughed, partly because she was herself struck by the humor of it, partly because it would so amuse Elsie Moss when she wrote her about it.
"Oh, no," she repeated. "Oh, no, Uncle John"—resolutely—"she was just—well—she was acting, I suppose. She wants very much to go on the stage."
"And doesn't lose any opportunity for practice?" He smiled, but rather ruefully. "Poor child! Somehow, of all ambitions, there seems to be more tragedy, more pitifulness, underlying that than any other. Where one succeeds, so many fail—go down into darkness and obscurity. Your mother had the fever at one time as a very young girl, Elsie. As a matter of fact, she had some little talent in that direction, but fortunately we were able to persuade her to give up the idea entirely." He sighed. "She was so tender-hearted and affectionate that she could have been induced to give up far more precious things than an ambition of that sort."
Elsie was gazing out of the window. He pointed out a country club and several fine estates at a distance, then asked:
"What is your friend going in for, Elsie, comedy or tragedy?"