The chorus tittered; the spectators suffocated their guffaws as well as
they could. Patricia grew more and more acutely and infuriatingly ironic
all the while.
Evidently Galbraith didn't mean to be a brute about it. He began every
one of these tussles to improve her reading of a line, with a gentleness
that would have done credit to a kinder-gartener. But, after three
attempts, each more ominously gentle and deliberate than the last, his
temper would suddenly fly all to pieces. "--No--no--no!" he would roar
at her, and the similes his exasperation would supply him with, for a
description of what her speech was like, were as numerous as the acids
in a chemical laboratory; and they all bit and burned just as hard.
Rose looked on with rather tepid feelings. She sympathized with
Galbraith on the whole. The poor man was doing his best; and the girl,
queerly, didn't seem to care. She confronted him in a sort of stockish
stupidity, saying her lines, when he told her to try again, with the
same frightful whang he was doing his best to correct, so that he was
justified, Rose felt, in accusing her of not trying, or even listening
to him.
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