line and stuck to it?

The members of his company were his, body and soul, while they were
rehearsing. He gave them fifteen minutes for lunch, and any actor or
actress who was foolish or unlucky enough to be a minute late, was sorry
afterwards. Mr. Hare was peppery and irascible, and lost his temper
easily.

Personally, I always got on well with my new manager, and I ought to be
grateful to him, if only because he gave me the second great opportunity
of my career--the part of Olivia in Wills's play from "The Vicar of
Wakefield." During this engagement at the Court I married again. I had
met Charles Wardell, whose stage name was Kelly, when he was acting in
"Rachael the Reaper" for Charles Reade. At the Court we played together
in several pieces. He had not been bred an actor, but a soldier. He was
in the 66th Regiment, and had fought in the Crimean War; been wounded,
too--no carpet knight. His father was a clergyman, vicar of Winlaton,
Northumberland--a charming type of the old-fashioned parson, a
friendship with Sir Walter Scott in the background, and many little
possessions of the great Sir Walter's in the foreground to remind one of
what had been.

Charlie Kelly, owing to his lack of training, had to be very carefully
suited with a part before he shone as an actor. But when he was
suited--his line was the bluff, hearty, kindly, soldier-like
Englishman--he was better than many people who had twenty years' start
of him in experience. This is absurdly faint praise. In such parts as
Mr. Brown in "New Men and Old Acres," the farmer father in "Dora,"
Diogenes in "Iris," no one could have bettered him. His most ambitious
attempt was Benedick, which he played with me when I first appeared as