Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/72

 This latter undertaking was the more arduous of the two, because of the uncompromising stiffness of the material she had to work with. The women of her little troupe, sensible wives and daughters of Dunbridge citizens, women who had all their lives been engaged in repressing their more lively emotions, in refraining from indecorous exhibitions of feeling, found it difficult to teach their voices the art of trembling, their features the trick of looking moved in an imaginary situation. The estimable youth who had assumed the rôle of insinuating villain could scarcely be induced not to state his designs and convey the subtle cunning of his machinations in a voice with which he might have taken command of an army. As to Celestina's lover, though his declaration of undying affection smacked strongly of the counting-house, his arms and legs would have done credit to a Dutch windmill. But Emmeline never for a moment lost heart. She drilled her unpromising company with tact and spirit, and she threw into her own rôle a naturalness and fire which held its own against all odds. The play, according to Dunbridge standards, turned out a success, and the "leading lady" went home with her husband after the performance, exhausted but triumphant.

But great as had been Emmeline's perplexities, this period of excitement and anxiety had been far more severe a strain upon Anson's nerves than upon hers. His house had been more at sixes