“Let the child alone. It will wear off. She has to go through it, but she’ll molt and take on a new set of feathers in due time.”
“She’s got to,” Kemble groaned. “I’d rather have her deformed than affected. If she’s going to be conscious of something, let her be conscious of her faults.”
Sheila had been schooled at school as well as at home. With both father and mother earning large sums, the family was prosperous enough to give its only child the most expensive forms of education—and did. In school she tormented and charmed her teachers; she was so endlessly eager for attention. It was true that she always tried to earn it and deserve it, but the effort irritated the instructors, whose ideal for a girl was that she should be as inconspicuous as possible. That was not Sheila’s ideal. Not at all!
She had soon tired of her classes. She was by nature quick at study. She learned her lessons by a sort of mental photography, as she learned her rôles later. The grind of her lessons irked her, not because she wanted to be out at play like other children, but because she wanted to be in at work. As ambitious young men chafe to run away from school and begin their destinies, so young women are beginning to fret for their own careers.
But Sheila’s father and mother were eager for her to stay a baby. Polly Farren especially was not unwilling to postpone acknowledging herself the mother of a grown-up daughter.
“You must have your childhood,” Roger had said.
“But I’ve had it,” Sheila declared.
“Oh, you have, have you?” her father laughed. “Why, you little upstart kid, you’re only a baby.”
Sheila protested: “Juliet was only thirteen years old when she married Romeo, and Eleonora Duse was only fourteen when she played the part, and here I’m sixteen and I haven’t started yet.”
“Help! help!” cried Roger, with a sickish smile. “But you must prepare yourself for your career by first educating yourself as a lady.”