Her Faithful Knight — page 167: what you’re looking at

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

Home Again. 163 or Cresswell, who might tell her. But I am a failure altogether. I cannot act a bit, and I fear I never shall.” Again the doctor laughed softly to himself. “You are the first young lady I have ever met who did not think herself an embryo Siddons,” he said. “But if you really are a failure, there is all the more reason why you should not be hard upon that young man you thought of just now—the one who is ready to offer you a nice home. Good-by, Miss Knight!’ Throughout the hot and dusty journey back to Bourne- mouth in a third-class compartment full of workmen, women and babies, Dorothy sat with set face and half- closed eyes, trying to think out the problem of the future. Poor Cresswell had been deeply hurt by the mere sug- gestion that she could have saved anything out of the five pounds a week Dorothy had sent her. The nurse’s fee, the rent, and charges for medicines made it a hard enough matter to manage on the sum, she declared, and Dorothy knew that it was useless to argue with her. When the agent and the dressmaker were paid off at the end of the tour Dorothy foresaw that barely a few shillings would remain of that sixty pounds from which she had hoped so much. She dared not think of the doctor’s bill, and her heart sank as she realized how im- probable it was that she would obtain another theatrical engagement, or that she would be able to meet her heavy expenses by thé exercise of her talent for drawing and » painting. She felt weak and tired. She had not realized how much late hours and early rising, working morning, noon and night, and persistent semi-starvation had weakened her. A healthy, well-built young woman of twenty can- not live upon cheap fish, bread and butter, water and tea, for any length of time without some loss, both of flesh and spirit, and, leaning back now in the hard, un- ; ECOMiileloo “S (S@)