Guy Hammersley; or, Clearing his Name — page 75: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

66 GUY HAMMERSLEY. ‘‘It looks most awfully as if that was the case, doesn’t itnow?” rejoined Ward, ‘‘AndIsay it with- eut any disrespect to your mother or my sister. But the thing that’s actually bothering me the mostis the idea of having to play on the stage of an opera house, for that’s where we open, the colonel says. If I get rattled, you see, it will not hurt me so much as it will your mother and Ruth.” ‘‘But you won't be obliged to face the audience as I shall,” returnedGuy. ‘‘Andif they don’t like what I am reading, I know I shall feel it, and you can imagine what sort of an effect it will have upon me. Still, as long as it lets me out of taking tickets I sup- pose I shouldn’t mind.” The fact of the matter was, Guy felt that he wouldn’t have minded anything very much if only he could be relieved of that cloud of suspicion that he felt was resting over him in the minds of at least twenty per- sons, and perhaps many more, back in New York. The memory of that fearful experience was ever pres- ent with him to dampen his joys, intensify his fears, and make him, in short, as different from the high- spirited, light-hearted fellow at Fairlock as it was possible for the same individual to become, Again that night he slept but little, and it was not till the train slowed up for Brilling that he forgot, for the time, the Old Man of the Sea load he was carrying. Even while making himself familiar with the humor- ous selections he intended reciting that night, he was sensible of a dull burden of contrasting gloom tugging away at his heartstrings meanwhile. But now, with the bustle of getting baggage together, preparatory Gomichboo <S (€(@) m