Explore "Patience Sparhawk and her Times" by Gertrude Atherton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Patience read this letter with some alarm. All that she had heard and read of the stage made her apprehensive. She feared that Rosita would become fast, would drink and smoke, and not maintain a proper reserve with men. Then the natural independence of her character asserted itself, and she felt pride in Rosita's courage and promptness of action. She even envied her a little: her life would be so full of variety.
"And after all it's fate," she thought philosophically. "She was cut out for the stage if ever a girl was. You might as well try to keep a bird from using its wings, or Miss Beale and auntie from being Temperance. I wonder what my fate is. It's not the stage, but it's not this, neither-not much. Shouldn't wonder if I made a break for Mr. Field some day. But I couldn't leave auntie. She's the kind that gets a hold on you."