Her Faithful Knight — page 111: what you’re looking at

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

Mr. Darcy’s Comedy Company. 107 meet, “that we’ve been out of a shop three months, and the screw is tip-top. Only I do wish Mr. Darcy could have written in a part for Dick.” Dick was the eldest hope of the Devines, a stolid lad of eleven, who from the age of two had been called upon to represent comic or tragic infants of either sex indiscrimi- nately, and Mrs. Devine felt distinctly aggrieved that her present manager had not seen his way to introduce a child’s part in order to show off her son’s accomplish- ments. The ladies traveled together, and Dorothy was not slow in discovering that a slight but definite feeling of hostility existed against her in that she was a “novice,” that worst of crimes in the eyes of an old “professional,” and yet in- trusted with the leading part. Mrs. Devine felt that she ought to have played Zara. Miss Graham inclined to the belief that she could both have looked and acted it, while her mother was boiling with indignation at the thought that a “wretched amateur” had been put over the head of her Mabel, who had been playing “juvenile” parts for six hardworking years. Mrs. Stourton-Chepe knew herself to be out of the running where young parts were con- cerned, but she was the only woman in the company ac- quainted with the Hon. Darcy’s reputation in society where women were concerned, and although she dearly loved a lord, and greatly wished to ingratiate herself with Baron Derrick’s second son, Dorothy’s remarkable beau- ty inclined Mrs. Stourton-Chepe to look upon her with suspicion. No young and unattended woman had a right to be so handsome. ‘Then, too, Dorothy was not related to the Houghton-Knights of Cheshire, which was a dis- tinct disadvantage ; worse than that, she did not seem to want to be, but plainly stated that she had “no distin- guished relatives.” For all these things Mrs. Stourton- Chepe regarded Dorothy with little favor, while she de- EOmicboo “S (S@)