When Brainard told MacNaughton of his purpose, the old actor expressed an unfeigned and unflattering surprise. “What do you want to turn that silly’s little head for?” he roared, flourishing his cigar. “Send her abroad to study! You’d much better send her to a grammar school or a young lady’s fem sem where she could learn ordinary deportment. She’ll never make an actress.” “I don’t agree with you,” Brainard replied quickly. “She’s the best we’ve got already.” Farson watched the two with an amused smile. The old actor shrugged his shoulders in mute disgust. “It isn’t saying much either,” the patron of the People’s Theater continued somewhat tartly. “Cordelia wasn’t the worst that happened last night by any means.” “My God!” the Scotsman groaned fervently. “I hope nothing as bad will ever happen to me again in this life.” Brainard’s doubts of MacNaughton’s fitness for his position of manager grew rapidly from this moment into a conviction that eventually produced difficulties in the hitherto harmonious management of the theatrical enterprise. Another disturbing current set in motion by the young person from Iole, Kansas! Brainard and Farson discussed at some length the details of Louisiana’s trip. The secretary was firmly convinced that some sort of chaperone should be provided for the girl. She needed a duenna or guardian, he said, to keep her out of scrapes, if ever a woman did. When this idea was suggested to Miss Delacourt, it received an immediate and positive discouragement. “I don’t know any female whom I could endure to have trailing around after me,” she said. “And what’s the use, anyhow? They won’t eat me up over there, I reckon. I’ve always managed to look out for myself so far, and I’m not likely to forget how now I’ve something worth doing to keep me busy. . . . No, I’ll go it alone, thank you, or not at all until I’m ready to select my own guardian.” With this she cast Farson a belligerent look that delighted Brainard. When the secretary tried to explain in circumspect terms the manifold dangers to which a young woman traveling alone was necessarily exposed, she said: “I’m going to take the pup along. A good dog is worth any two chaperones in case of trouble.” Brainard observed finally: “I think Miss Delacourt is right. She will get on very well anywhere by herself. She has the habit of independence.” “You see!” the young woman remarked, nodding loftily to Farson. “You are too conventional for the theater. I have the habit of perfect independence, as your boss said. And I don’t propose to give it up in a hurry either.” With this second jab at the secretary she squeezed her dog in an ecstasy of good spirits.