"I have always been told they were so disreputable. Are they?"
"My dear Miss Arkroyd, what a very old-fashioned idea!" Challis laughed outright. "No!—they are just like everybody else as to manners and morals, and that sort of thing. They are not monks and nuns, certainly. But such a many folk are not that."
Judith looked at him doubtfully. Was not that rather the way men sometimes talk, throwing dust in the eyes that want to distinguish right from wrong? Monks and nuns, as we all know, are people that want to deprive you and me of cakes and ale. But what is meant by cakes and ale? She would push a test question home. If Mr. Challis had a grown-up daughter, she asked, would he let her go on the stage, if she wished it very much, and had a turn for it? Of course he would, was his answer, without hesitation. Why should he not? This seemed to decide Judith on an extension of confidence.
"I will tell you why I am asking. I know a girl ... well! I should say woman ... who wants to go on the stage. But it seems impossible. What her capabilities would be I cannot say. But it seems hard that she should be unable to give them a trial."
"Why cannot she?"
"Her family oppose it; or rather, she knows they would oppose it if the proposal took form. At present she only knows that they treat the idea with derision—as something hardly worth ridicule."
"But why?—if she has it at heart."
"Respectability. Position. Balls in the season. Carriages at Ascot. St. George's, Hanover Square. Family, in short!"
"Tell me more about this friend. Why does she suppose she has qualifications? She must have had some experience to convince her?"
Judith stopped to consider a few seconds. "Yes, I can tell you that," she said. "She played in the 'Antigone' a couple of years ago. You know my brother and his friends played it in London, and got the female parts played by women. Of course, at Cambridge it was the boys themselves."