She would have fled
from the stage if she had guessed that cousin Richard, whom she greatly
admires, was to be here. I can only hope she will not hear of it till
the play is over."
"If his being here is going to make _Petruchio_ tremble more, and
_Katherine_ act naughtier, I shall feel dreadfully guilty," thought
Ruth. But somehow when the curtain went up she could not help being glad
that he was there, behind her.
Roberta had said much, in hours of relaxation after long and tense
rehearsals, of the difficulty of making schoolgirls forget themselves in
any part. It had been difficult, indeed, to train her pupils to speak
and act with naturalness in roles so foreign to their experience. But
she had been much more successful than she had dared to believe, and her
own enthusiasm, her tireless drilling, above all her inspiring example
as she spoke her girls' lines for them and demonstrated to them each
telling detail of stage business, had done the work with astonishing
effect. The hardest task of all had been to find and develop a
satisfactory delineator of the difficult part of the _Tamer of the
Shrew_, but Roberta had persevered, even taking a journey of some hours
with Olivia Cartwright to have her see and study one of the greatest of
_Petruchios_ at two successive performances.
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