Brainard winced at the gibe.
“Is that what they call us?”
“And a lot of other things,” the young woman admitted frankly. “Highbrows and amateurs and boneheads and—”
“I don’t know you, and I thought I had met every one in the company.”
“I’m not in the front row, you see. I am what they call a nee-o-phyte—a pupil in the Actors’ College, when there is any college.”
“Oh, I remember now!” Brainard said, recalling the first and only pupil enrolled. “Your name is—”
“Delacourt—Louisiana Delacourt,” the girl rolled out with gusto, as if she enjoyed her name, and hadn’t many opportunities of using it.
The slightly Southern accent of the girl set puzzling currents of memory at work in Brainard’s mind. He looked at her more closely, but in the dim light of the auditorium could not make out distinctly the face which was shrouded in one of the inverted “peach-basket” hats of the period. She seemed a slight little body.
“Say,” Miss Delacourt remarked confidentially, “I bet I could show that wiggle-tailed Flossie a stunt or two!”
“Do you know Lear?”