But when, about four o’clock that afternoon, the rehearsal was over, Galbraith called Olga out to him and allowed himself a long incredulous stare at her.  “Will you tell me, Larson,” he asked, “why in the name of Heaven, if you could do that, you didn’t do it yesterday?”

“I couldn’t do it yesterday,” she said.  “Dana taught me.”

“Taught you!” he echoed.  “Beginning after last night’s rehearsal?...  Dane!” he called to Rose, who had been watching a little anxiously to see what would happen.

“You’ve learned it very well indeed,” he said with a nod of dismissal to Olga, as Rose came up.  “Don’t try to change it.  Stick to what you’ve got.”

Then, to Rosa, “Larson tells me you taught her.  How did you do it?”

“Why, I just—­taught her,” said Rosa.  “I showed her how I said each line, and I kept on showing her until she could do it.”

“How long did it take you—­all night?”

“All the time there’s been since last rehearsal,” said Rosa, “except for three meals.”

“Good God!” said Galbraith.  “Devereux said it couldn’t be done, and I agreed with her.  Well, live and learn.  Look here!  Will you teach the others—­the other four in the sextette?  I’ll see you’re paid for it.”

“Why, yes,—­of course,” said Rose, hesitating a little.

“Oh, I don’t mean overnight,” he said, “but mornings—­between rehearsals—­whenever you can.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” said Rose.  “I was just wondering if they’d want to be taught—­I mean, by another chorus-girl, you know.”

“They’ll want to be taught if they want to keep their jobs,” said Galbraith.  And then, to her astonishment, and also perhaps to his, for the thing was radically out of the etiquette of the occasion, he reached out and shook hands with her.  “I’m very much obliged to you,” he said.

CHAPTER V

MRS. GOLDSMITH’S TASTE

If there was a profession in the world which Rose had never either idly or seriously considered as a possible one for herself, that of a teacher was it.  And yet, the first money she ever earned in her life was the twenty dollars the management paid her for teaching the other four girls in the sextette to say their lines.  She was a born teacher, too.  And the born teacher is a rare bird.

One must know something in the first place, of course, before one can teach it—­a fact that has resulted in the fitting of an enormous number of square pegs into round holes.  Most of the people in the world who are trying to teach, are those whose aptitude is for learning.  But the scholar’s temper and the teacher’s are antipodal; a salient, vivid personality that can command attention, the unconscious will to conquer—­to enforce (a very different thing from the wish to do these things) that is the sine qua non for a real teacher.  And that, of course, was Rose all over.