“He is not married, is he?”
“Oh yes, he has been married for five-and-twenty years.”
The child looked so crestfallen I felt I had been unkind.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” she almost sobbed, “won’t the girls at school be surprised! Are you quite, quite sure he is not young and beautiful? he looks so lovely on the stage.”
“Quite, quite sure. You have only seen him from before the footlights. He is a good fellow, clever and charming, and he works hard, but he is no lover in velvet and jerkin, no hero of romance, and the less you worry your foolish little head about him the better, my dear.”
How many men and women believe like this child that there are only princes and princesses on the stage.
There was an old Scotch body—an educated, puritanical person—who once informed me, “The the-a-ter is very bad, very wicked, ma’am.”
“Why?” I asked, amazed yet interested.
“It’s full of fire and lights like Hell. They just discuss emotions there, ma’am, and it’s morbid to discuss emotions and just silly conceit to think about them. I like deeds, and not talk—I do!”
“You seem to think the theatre a hotbed of iniquity?”