Her Faithful Knight — page 109: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Mr. Darcy’s Comedy Company. 105 ent friends, was of dyspeptic habit, and invariably plunged in gloom. He scarcely ever in private life ventured on an original remark; but on the stage, by some strange freak of Nature, his every word was productive of uproarious merriment, and the dullest of audiences were cheered by his performances. Apart from his stage successes, he was a kindly dispositioned man, to whom the letter “h” had always offered insuperable difficulties ; a great stick- - ler for the proprieties, and admirer of what he considered “gentlemanly” and “ladylike’’ conduct, and an excellent judge of whisky. | The “leading juvenile,” as the gentleman who plays young lovers is termed in stage parlance, was a very tall young man, known as Ernest Devine, with plenty of “go” and a defective delivery, who for ten years had delighted audiences “over the water” by vigorous representations of such easy and straightforward parts as Hamlet, Robert Macaire, Charles Surface, Romeo, and Coupeau in “Drink.” With him was his wife, a small, worn-looking, overdressed woman, with keen dark eyes who was ever ready and willing to play anything, from Cleopatra to Little Buttercup, at twenty-four hours’ notice. 99 The aristocratic portion of the troupe was represented by another married couple, Mr and Mrs. Stourton-Chepe (spelled with a diphthong). To these latter Dorothy was at once specially introduced, and it was implied by the Hon. Darcy that their companionship would be very val- uable to her. Mrs. Stourton-Chepe was a handsome woman of forty, with kindly eyes and a hard voice. She could never forget Mr. Stourton-Chepe’s titled relations, or the dreadful necessity which compelled her and her husband to tour about the country “like vagrants,” as she pathetically expressed it. Her husband was a whimsical, little, dried-up-looking gentleman of vast unsatisfied am- bition. He and his wife wrangled in public and private Eomicboo “S (S)