And here piped up the butcher’s wife who was more interested in the play than in personalities:

[Pg 38]

“I don’t see how Olivia took him for the page she was in love with. He didn’t look like Viola in the face. She was real pretty, but he’d a queer sly mug on him, that boy.”

“Aw, you can’t be too particular. You don’t need to have it so real.”

“I guess she was meant to be blinded by love. And him dressed the same, hair and all, might lead her astray.”

[Pg 39]

[Pg 39]

“I don’t see how you could have ’em look just alike unless they’d get an actress who had a real twin brother, and maybe you’d go the whole country over and not find that.”

“He ain’t like her no way,” growled old Gabriel from the wheel, “I seen ’em both when they wasn’t acting and he’s an ugly pup, that one.”

Then the boat grating on the Hayworth wharf, Gabriel urged them off. He hadn’t got through yet, got to go back for part of the company who were calculating to get the main line at Spencer, and after that back again for the Tracy boy. He muttered on as they climbed out, grumbling to himself, which nobody noticed as it had been his mode of expression for the last thirty years.

The swaying throng of boats emptied their cargoes and the thick-pressed crowd, moving to the end of the wharf, separated into streams and groups. Farewells, last commending comments, rose on the limpid sea-scented air. Everybody was a little tired. The villagers, dragging their feet, passed along the board walks to their vine-draped[Pg 40] piazzas. They would find their kitchens hot and dull that night after two hours in the enchanted land of Illyria. The waiting line of motors absorbed the summer visitors, wheeled off and purred away past the white cottages under the New England elms. The matrons sank gratefully upon the yielding cushions, rolling by the dusty buggies, the battered Fords, the lines of bicycle riders, into the quiet serene country where the shadows were lying long and clear. Yes, it had been a great success; from first to last there hadn’t been a hitch.

[Pg 40]

[Pg 41]

[Pg 41]

II

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