To Ruth, sitting wide eyed and hot cheeked, her sister seemed the most spirited and bewitching Katherine ever played.  Her shrewishness was that of the wilful madcap girl who has never been crossed rather than that of the inherently ill-tempered woman, and her every word and gesture, her every expression of face and tone of voice, were worth noting and watching.  By no means finished work—­as how should it be, in a young teacher but few years out of school herself—­it yet had an originality and freshness of interpretation all its own, and the applause which praised it was very spontaneous and genuine.  Roberta had been the joy of her class in college dramatics, and several of her former classmates, in her audience to-night, gleefully told one another that she was surpassing anything she had formerly done.

“It’s simply superb, you know, don’t you?—­your sister’s acting,” said Richard Kendrick’s voice in Ruth’s ear again at the end of the first act, and she turned her burning cheek his way as she answered happily: 

“It seems so to me—­but then I’m prejudiced, you know.”

“We’re all prejudiced, when it comes to that—­made so by this performance.  I’m pretty proud of my cousin Petruchio, too,” he went on, including Mrs. Cartwright at his side.  “I’d no idea boots could be so becoming to any girl—­outside of a chorus.  Olivia’s splendid.  Do you suppose”—­he was addressing Ruth again—­“you and I might go behind the scenes and tell them how we feel about it?”

“Oh, no, indeed, Mr. Kendrick,” Ruth replied, much shocked.  “It’s lots different, a girls’ play like this, from the regular theatre.  They’d be so astonished to see you.  Rob’s told me, heaps of times, how they go perfectly crazy after every act, and she has all she can do to keep them cool enough for the next.  She’d never forgive us.  And besides, Olivia Cartwright’s not to know you’re here, you know.”

“That’s true.  I’d forgotten how disturbing my presence is supposed to be,” and Richard leaned back again to laugh with Mrs. Cartwright.

But, behind the scenes, the news had penetrated, nobody knew just how.  Roberta learned, to her surprise and distraction, that Richard Kendrick was somehow a particularly interesting figure in the eyes of her young players, and she speedily discovered that they were all more or less excited at the knowledge that he was somewhere below the footlights.  Olivia, indeed, was immediately in a flutter, quite as her mother had predicted, at the thought of Cousin Richard’s eyes upon her in her masculine attire; and Roberta, in the brief interval she could spare for the purpose, had to take her sternly in hand.  An autocratic Katherine might, then, have been overheard addressing a flurried Petruchio, in a corner: 

“For pity’s sake, child, who is he that you need be afraid of him?  He’s no critic, I’ll wager, and if he’s your cousin he’ll be sure to think you act like a veteran, anyhow.  Forget him, and go ahead.  You’re doing splendidly.  Don’t you dare slump just because you’re remembering your audience!”