Sheila had encountered such mysterious pity once or twice before and she flamed to resent it. But even as eloquence rushed to her lips she remembered her mother’s last words as she kissed her good-by—they had been an injunction to be polite at all costs.
The struggle to defend her mother’s glory and to obey her mother’s self-denying ordinance was so bitter that it squeezed a big tear out of each big eye.
Mrs. Vickery, seeming to divine the secret of her plight, cuddled her to her breast with a gush of affectionate homage. Reassured by this surrender, Sheila became again a child.
And now Dorothy, with that professional jealousy which actors did not invent and do not monopolize, that jealousy which is seen in animals and read of in gods—Dorothy stood aloof and pouted at the invader of her mother’s lap. Her lip crinkled and she batted out a few tears of her own till her mother stretched forth an arm and made a haven for her at her bosom. Then Mrs. Vickery spoke between the two wet cheeks pressed to hers:
“And now what was this wonderful game where so many people got killed? Was it a war or a shipwreck or—or what?”
Sheila forgot her tears in the luxury of instructing an elder. With unmitigated patronage, as who in her turn should say, “You poor thing, you!” she exclaimed: “Why, don’t you know? It’s the last ack of ‘Hamlet!’ ”
“Oh, I see! Of course! How perfectly stupid of me!”
Sheila endeavored to comfort her: “Oh no, it wasn’t stupid a tall, Mrs. Vickery, if you’ll pardon me for cont’adictin’, but—well, you see, we got no real paduction, no costumes or scenery or anything.”
Mrs. Vickery said: “That doesn’t matter; but who was who? You see, I got in so late the usher didn’t give me a program.”