"Nonsense! It's lucky you're going back to school yourself, child, to get these sentimental notions out of your head. Come, vacation's over! Let's not sigh for more dances; let's go at our work with a will. I've plenty before me. The school play comes week after next, and I haven't as good material this year as last. How I'm ever going to get Olivia Cartwright to put sufficient backbone into her _Petruchio_, I don't know. I only wish I could play him myself!" "Rob! Couldn't you?" "It's never done. My part is just to coach and coach, to go over the lines a thousand times and the stage business ten thousand, and then to stay behind the scenes and hiss at them: 'More spirit! More life! Throw yourself into it!' and then to watch them walk it through like puppets! Well, _The Taming of the Shrew_ is pretty stiff work for amateurs, no doubt of that--there's that much to be said. Breakfast time, childie! You must hurry, and I must be off." Half an hour later Ruth watched her sister walk away down the street with Louis, her step as lithe and vigorous as her brother's. Ruth herself was accustomed to drive with her father to the school which she attended--a rival school, as it happened, of the fashionable one at which Roberta taught. She was not so strong as her sister, and a two-mile walk to school was apt to overtire her. But Roberta chose to walk every day and all days, and the more stormy the weather the surer was she to scorn all offers of a place beside Ruth in the brougham. Louis's comment on the return of his sister to her work at Miss Copeland's school was much like that of Ruth. "Sorry vacation's over, Rob? That's where I have the advantage of you. The office never closes for more than a day; therefore I'm always in training." "That's an advantage, surely enough. But I'm ready to go back. As I was telling Ruth this morning, I'm anxious to know whether Olivia Cartwright has forgotten her lines, and whether she's going to be able to infuse a bit of life into her _Petruchio_. This trying to make a schoolgirl play a big man's part--" "You could do it, yourself," observed Louis, even as Ruth had done. "And shouldn't I love to! I'm just longing to stride about the stage in _Petruchio's_ boots." "I'll wager you are. I'd like to see you do it. But the part of _Katherine_ would be the thing for you--fascinating shrew that you could be." "This--from a brother! Yes, I'd like to play _Katherine_, too. But give me the boots, if you please. Do you happen to remember Olivia Cartwright?" "Of course I do. And a mighty pretty and interesting girl she is. I should think she might make a _Petruchio_ for you." "I thought she would. But the boots seem to have a devastating effect. The minute she gets them on--even in imagination, for we haven't had a dress rehearsal yet--her voice grows softer and her manner more lady-like. It's the funniest thing I ever knew, to hear her say the lines--