Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/79

Rh she did not interrupt her work while she replied: "Don't you think I do it well?"

"Because you 're deceiving yourself. You 're playing being married and keeping house—acting it—and you think it 's real."

"Well, at least," she said, "I get more pleasure out of it than I ever did in your plays." She looked up at him, archly sly, to see how he took it.

He took it with a grim nod. "You 've been reading Ellen Terry's memoirs. That 's where you got the idea. Aha!" he cried. "I thought so. Wanted to act the Mary Anderson, did n't you?"

She had shown by a blush that he had probed her, but she carried it off: "Ellen Terry went back to the stage. Mary Anderson—"

"Oh, you 'll go back. You 'll go back. And the public 'll not remember who you are."

"It would n't take me more than one night to remind them," she said proudly as she passed into the kitchen.

He drew up a chair to the table and sat down with his elbows on the cloth. "Would n't it! Would n't it!" he exulted. "How long do you think you 'll keep young here? You 'll look like that old apple orchard before you 're thirty. Work yourself angular—"

"I 've gained five pounds," she called out.

"Spoil your hands—"

"I 'll wear rubber gloves."

"Grow dowdy, stolid, beefy. Your husband will tire of you—"

"Will he?" she said, reappearing with the omelet