Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/71

 He was called away by the stage director, and I remained to ask her, "How was that?"—being already curious about her.

She replied, demurely, "I sold it for a hundred dollars." And with that she left me, puzzled.

It was not until I heard, later, of her selling her dog-cart to leave home that I understood the pert creature had been punning. She apologized for it, then, by explaining that she had been nervous. "I was frightened to death," she said. "It was my first engagement with a regular company, and I didn't know how to behave."

I do not believe a word of that. I do not believe that she was ever frightened in her life.

She left me, as I said, puzzled. She did not invite any further acquaintance, and I did not seek the invitation. My curiosity about her was lost, for the time, in a curiosity about the stage conditions that appeared to my astonished apprehension as the rehearsals progressed. And since those conditions have largely helped to make Jane Shore what she is, I should like to indicate them briefly.

In the first place, I had supposed that the rehearsal of a play, by a stage director and his company, was like the rehearsal of a musical composition by an orchestra and its conductor. I expected to hear it studied, practised, faithfully interpreted. I imagined that the author would rise at impatient