So the impudent little baggage faced him out, on his own ground; and he was forced to admit to himself that, crude as she was, she managed effects.
“You might be able to act some day,” he said to her on an occasion.
“Give me a job, and let me try.”
“You mean it?”
“Certainly.”
“But your parents?”
“They’d howl—and give in. They always do.”
“H’m—well, we’ll see.”
The great night came. Needless to say that the Shaw playlet and the brilliant Cartel were the events of the occasion. Isabelle was by no means obliterated in his shadow. She made a very considerable impression. There was a sort of fire about her. Her lines were read, not recited; and Shaw is the acid test for the amateur. The performance received an ovation.