Her Faithful Knight — page 126: what you’re looking at

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

122 Her First Rehearsal. British hilarity. But you really must let me, the author, know the kind of personality I want for my heroine. And let me assure you I do not want a little round-faced, plump, wasp-waisted milliner’s apprentice like Miss Gra- ham, or a middle-aged shrew like the excellent Mother Devine.” “Miss Knight will spoil your play, sir.” “Miss Knight realizes my ideal.” Mr. Strutt shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Possibly he might have cherished resentment against Dorothy, regarding her from the ordinary professional standpoint as a conceited amateur, who was crowding out experienced artistes to air her own incompetency, but that, later on in that same day, he met her on the pier and held some conversation with her which altogether changed his views. : “TI know you thought me very bad to-day, Mr. Strutt,” the girl said humbly. “I had no idea acting was such a difficult business.”’ “Most stage-struck young ladies think it the easiest thing out,” the old actor observed stiffly. “But I am not stage-struck,” she said, turning her clear, gray eyes upon him. “What made you think so, Mr. Strutt?” The comedian hummed and ha’d a little. “Meeting you at Whitlock’s agency,” he said at last, “and afterward here engaged to play the leading part in this—er—drama, I naturally supposed that, like many another pretty young lady who has grown tired of her luxurious home, you had adopted the stage with the idea of becoming a Bernhardt without either temperament or training.” “Indeed, no!’ she exclaimed earnestly. “I never dreamed of going on the stage when I went to see Mr. Whitlock on business of quite another kind. And when EComicboo “S (EC)