"And," says Miss Morris, "I swelled and swelled, it seemed to me, I
was so proud of the gentle old man's approval. But that same night I
came woefully to grief. I had been one of the crowd of 'witches.'
Later, being off duty, I was, as usual, planted in the entrance,
watching the acting of the grown-ups and grown-greats. Lady Macbeth
was giving the sleep-walking scene, in a way that jarred upon my
feelings. I could not have told why, but it did. I believed myself
alone, and when the memory-haunted woman roared out:

"'Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much _blood_
in him?' I remarked, under my breath. 'Did you expect to find ink in
him?'

"A sharp 'ahem' right at my shoulder told me I had been overheard, and
I turned to face--oh, horror! the stage-manager. He glared angrily at
me and demanded my ideas on the speech, which in sheer desperation at
last I gave, saying:

"'I thought Lady Macbeth was amazed at the _quantity_ of blood that
flowed from the body of such an old man--for when you get old, you
know, sir, you don't have so much blood as you used to, and I only
thought that, as the "sleeping men were laced, and the knives smeared
and her hands bathed with it," she might perhaps have whispered, "Yet
who would have thought the old man to have so _much_ blood in him?"' I
didn't mean an impertinence. Down fell the tears, for I could not talk
and hold them back at the same time.

"He looked at me in dead silence for a few moments, then he said:
'Humph!' and walked away, while I rushed to the dressing-room and
cried and cried, and vowed that never, never again would I talk to
myself--in the theater, at all events.

"Only a short time afterward I had a proud moment when I was allowed
to go on as the longest witch in the caldron scene in 'Macbeth.'
Perhaps I might have come to grief over it had I not overheard the
leading man say: 'That child will never speak those lines in the
world!' And the leading man was six feet tall and handsome, and I was
thirteen and a half years old, and to be called a child!

"I was in a secret rage, and I went over and over my lines at all
hours, under all circumstances, so that nothing should be able to
frighten me at night. And then, with my pasteboard crown and white
sheet and petticoat, I boiled up in the caldron and gave my lines well
enough for the manager to say low:

"'Good! Good!' and the leading man next night asked me to take care of
his watch and chai