That comforted her strangely. "Uncle John couldn't have administered first aid himself more successfully," she said to herself humorously as she dried her eyes.
She bathed her face and, standing before the mirror, addressed the charming reflection in the pink frock. She mustn't expect plain sailing all the time she warned her. She must expect to be up against it frequently. She must keep her class motto in mind and not expect everything to be dead easy. It was hard not to be able to claim one's beautiful mother; but she was playing a part; she was on the stage in costume, and the part-she-was-playing's mother's name wasn't Middleton nor Moss and was Augusta Pritchard. She must keep her motto in mind and say continually to herself: "Act well your part, there all the honor lies."
That very evening at dinner some one asked her where she got her dimples—whether they were inherited?
"Or, perhaps, Miss Marley's a freak like the white peacock at the gardens?" broke in a callow youth whom Elsie disliked.
"From my mother," she said quickly, and Miss Pritchard, sensitive to the least sound of hurt in Elsie's voice, introduced another subject.
Nevertheless, she wondered. She hadn't seen Augusta Pritchard since the latter was a girl of nineteen, but she couldn't recollect that she had any dimples or shadows of dimples. She couldn't even imagine the combination of dimples with her white, cold, rather expressionless face, nor reconcile them with the true Pritchard temperament. It seemed inconceivable that Elsie could have inherited them except through the Marleys; and yet, of course, Elsie remembered her mother who had died only three years ago.
She had to consider that the girl didn't like that fresh Jerrold boy and had been nettled by his remark. Possibly in her indignation she had said what first came into her mind, though it didn't seem like her. Miss Pritchard sighed, for she had worshipped at the shrine of truth all her life, and strive as she would, she couldn't but feel a deviation from Elsie's wonted frankness here.
She pondered much upon the subject and later in the summer—on the evening preceding their return to New York, it was—as they were talking about Elsie's studying, Miss Pritchard suddenly became serious.
"Elsie, there's something I want to say to you as an older woman to a young girl," she began. "You will have one difficulty to contend with that I had in newspaper work, only in your case the temptation will be greater, and your task correspondingly harder. There's a poem of a child-actor of Queen Elizabeth's time, little Salathiel Pavy, who constantly played the part of an old man. The verses relate that he acted the part so naturally that the fates mistook him for an old man and cut off his thread of life in his tender years. Now you, Elsie dear, concerned with make-believe—fiction—as you will constantly be in your study for the stage, eager, of course, to use every moment and occasion, with one subject dominating your thoughts, will need to be very, very careful with regard to your separate, personal life. In other words, in good old-fashioned terms, you'll have to guard your soul. Keep that good and pure and true. Keep that sacred, above and apart from your work, and then whether you are ever a great actress or not, you will be a good woman."
And then half shyly, but beautifully, she repeated Matthew Arnold's "Palladium":