Her Faithful Knight — page 127: what you’re looking at

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

Her First Rehearsal. 123 he suggested that I should play this part I told him again and again that I couldn’t act until——”’ “Until you let yourself be persuaded? Well, well, young ladies are naturally vain and fond of excitement and change, and no doubt it will be an amusing experience to you. But do you ever think, Miss Knight, of the hard- working and needy young actresses whom the freaks and caprices of rich young ladies like you keep from earning their daily bread ?”’ 3 She looked at him with contracted brows and tear-filled eyes. “Mr. Strutt,” she said suddenly in a low voice, “there is something I must tell you, although you are almost a stranger, and it concerns my private affairs. Instead of being a rich young lady, I have had no money but what I have earned for more than three years; and I have taken this engagement because my sister, whom I love more than anything in the world, is very ill, and I want money to buy her all she needs. You won't think so hardly of me now, will you?” Marmaduke Strutt looked at her, read the truth of her words in her face, and a sympathetic moisture came into his eyes, too. For some minutes they promenaded the pier side by side in silence. Then he turned to her and said, very gently and reverently: “TI beg your pardon, Miss Knight. If I can in any way help you with your part, you would be pleasing me very much by consulting me.” cr After that little talk, the stage manager ceased to com- plain of her, and from his long experience he was able to give Dorothy many valuable hints in the technical part of her work on such subjects as stage gesture, the pitch of her voice, and other necessary points ignored by the stage novice. As to making her act, that was beyond him. As she Eomichbooks (E)