lady.
And Montgomery was not wholly disappointed.

Kate, who like Lois, was a trifle temperamental, had fallen before the
charms of one Lawrence Hastings. The manner of Hastings's advent in
Montgomery is perhaps worthy of a few words, inasmuch as he came to
stay. Hastings was an actor, who visited Montgomery one winter as a
member of a company that had trustfully ventured into the provinces with
a Shakespearean repertoire. Montgomery was favored in the hope that,
being a college town, it would rally to the call of the serious drama.
Unfortunately the college was otherwise engaged at the moment with a
drama of more contemporaneous interest and authorship. An unusually
severe January added to the eager and nipping air upon which the curtain
rises in "Hamlet," and proved too much for the well-meaning players.
Hastings (so ran tradition) had gallantly bestowed such money as he had
upon the ladies of the company to facilitate their flight to New York.
His father, a successful manufacturer of codfish packing-boxes at
Newburyport, telegraphed money for the prodigal's return with the
stipulation that he should forswear the inky cloak and abase himself in
the box factory.

At this point Kate Montgomery, in charge of an entertainment for the
benefit of Center Church, invited Hastings (thus providentially flung
upon the Hoosier coasts) to give a reading in the church parlors. Almost
coincidently the opera house at Montgomery needed a manager, and
Hastings accepted the position. The Avon Dramatic Club rose and
flourished that winter under Hastings's magic wand. It is not every town
of fifteen thousand that suddenly enrolls a Hamlet among her citizens,
and as the creator and chief spirit of the dramatic club, Hastings's
social acceptance was immediate and complete. In other times the town
would have been wary of an actor; but had not Hastings given his
services free of charge for the benefit of Center Church, and was he not
a gentleman, the son of a wealthy manufacturer, and had he not declined
money offered by telegraph that he might cling stubbornly to his art?
Kate Montgomery talked a good deal about his art, which he would not
relinquish for the boxing of codfish. After Hastings had given a lecture
on "Macbeth" (with readings from the play) in the chapel of Madison
College, his respectability was established. There was no reason
whatever why Kate Montgomery should not marry him; and she did, at the
end of his first year in tow