iciously.

"Perhaps not of the academic brand," admitted Smith, laughingly; "but I
believe it's good sound criticism just the same. If a man is going to
play the swashbuckler, I like to see him able to swash his buckle. But
seriously, I shouldn't have objected to that one bad piece of business
if it hadn't seemed to me that the whole performance was out of key and
wrong. But here's the curtain going up."

The curtain rose on Signor Baptista's house, and for the next half hour
farce comedy supreme held the audience in its grasp.

"Katherine is very good, don't you think?" queried Helen, when once
more the inane wanderings of the orchestra began to compete with the
conversation.

"Very good indeed; I like her rages."

"I have always been sorry that I never saw Ada Rehan; every one who
ever saw her says just as you do that no one could equal her."

"I'm sure no one could. I have seen her sit with her hands in her lap
and tears--genuine tears--streaming down her cheeks for very rage when
Petruchio harries her in this act. Heavens! but she was in a fine
fury! Do you know that the only objection I ever had to this play was
that I grew sorry for Katherine--sorry to see her proud neck bent to
any yoke, so to speak."

"She is made finally to like it, though."

"Yes; she is--in the play. But I never could more than half believe
that she actually liked it, for all that. Oh, I've no doubt it's wrong
to prefer ungoverned wrath to sane and controlled sobriety; but she was
so magnificent in her savagery that it seemed a shame she had to be
tamed at all. Like the lions and the other animals that they train to
jump through hoops, you miss something, you know; some splendid essence
has evaporated, and I for one am sorry to watch it go."

"They tell me," said the girl, demurely, "that under the proper
conditions and auspices young ladies are secretly glad to be
subjugated."

"I suppose they have it naturally--cradle of the race, and all that
sort of thing. Just the same, I still continue to prefer Katherine in
her first state."

"You speak of her as though she were an etching."

"She suggests one, in that gown she wore in the last act--or would,
except for the color."

"From that rather supercilious remark I should gather that you do not
admire colored etchings."

"Hybrid affairs, don't you think?"

But before this subject could be pursued, the play once more resumed
the center of the stage.

It is the immo