Part 11 (1/2)
”Goodness, I'm not Sara,” gasped Helen.
”Oh, I mean the play, not the character,” explained Polly impatiently.
”It's going to be simply great. What do you suppose we've got now, Helen?”
”I don't know,” said Helen, sitting down on the floor, since the bed and all the chairs were fully occupied.
”Well guess,” commanded Polly, tossing her a cus.h.i.+on.
”A lot of Turkish-looking things for Mr. Carrisford's study.”
”Nonsense! We can get those all right when the time comes.”
”Josephine Boyd has learned her part.”
”Then she's done a tall lot of work on it since last rehearsal,” said Polly serenely. ”I'm sure I hope she has, but this is something any amount nicer.”
”Then I give up.”
”Well, it's a monkey,” cried Polly triumphantly, ”a real live monkey that belongs to a hand-organ man in Boston. The Italian bootblack at the station knows him, and--did he promise fair and square to get them up here, Lucile?”
”Fair and square,” repeated Lucile promptly. ”I said we'd give him five dollars and his fare up from Boston. It's well worth it. A cat would have been too absurd when everybody knows the story.”
”I hope Sara won't mind carrying a live monkey across the stage,” said Betty. ”I should be dreadfully afraid it would bite.”
”She ought to have thought of that when she took the part,” said Madeline. ”She can't flunk now.”
”Let's hurry it through and have the organ-man play for a dance afterward,” suggested the ingenious Georgia Ames. ”He'd surely throw that in for the five dollars.”
”Better have him play between the acts too,” put in somebody else.
”There's nothing like getting your money's worth.”
”And we'll pay him all in pennies,” added Polly gleefully. ”We can take turns handing them out to the monkey. How many pennies will there be in five dollars and a fare from Boston, Lucile?”
Helen listened to their gay banter, wondering, as many thoughtful people have wondered before her, at the light-hearted abandon of these other girls. ”It must be fun to be like that,” she reflected, ”but I don't believe I should want to change places with any of them. They only see their own little piece of things, and they don't even know it's little,--like the man who didn't know anything about the forest he was walking through, because he got so interested in the trees. My tree is just a scraggly, crooked little sapling that won't ever amount to much, but I can see the whole big forest, and hear it talk, and that makes up. I'm glad I'm one of the kind that college teaches to think,” ended Helen happily.
A moment later she made an addendum. ”Betty Wales is a kind by herself,”
she decided. ”She doesn't exactly think, but she knows. And she's really responsible for to-day. I wish I could tell her about it.”
CHAPTER VII
ROBERTA ”ARRIVES”
It was dress rehearsal night for the Belden House play, and the hall in the Students' Building, where the big house-plays are performed was the scene of a tremendous bustle and excitement. The play was to be ”Sara Crewe,” or rather ”The Little Princess,” for that is the t.i.tle of the regular stage version of Mrs. Burnett's story which the Belden House was giving by the special permission of the Princess herself. The pretty young actress who had ”created” the part was a friend of Madeline's father, and Madeline, being on the committee to choose a play, declared that she was tired to death of seeing the girls do Sheridan and Goldsmith and the regulation sort of modern farce, and boldly wrote to the Princess for permission to act her play, because it seemed so exactly suited to the capabilities of college girls. The Princess had not only said yes, but she had declared that she should be very much interested in the success of the play, and when Madeline, writing to thank her, had suggested that the Belden House would be only too delighted if she came up to see their performance, she had accepted their invitation with enthusiasm. Of course the committee and the cast were exceedingly flattered, but they were also exceedingly frightened and nervous, and even the glorious promise of a live monkey, with a hand-organ man thrown in, did not wholly rea.s.sure them.
To-night everything seemed to be at sixes and sevens. Though most of the committee had toiled over it all the afternoon, the stage resembled pandemonium rather than the schoolroom of Miss Minchen's Select Seminary, which was to be the scene of the first act. The committee were tired and, to speak frankly, cross, with the exception of Madeline, who was provokingly cool and nonchalant, though she had worked harder than any one else. The cast were infected with that irresponsible hilarity that always attacks an amateur company at their last rehearsal. They danced about the stage, getting in the way of the committee, shrieking with laughter at their first glimpses of one another's costumes, and making flippant suggestions for all sorts of absurd and impossible improvements.
Meanwhile, regardless of the fact that the rehearsal ought to have begun half an hour before, the committee and Mr. Carrisford's three Hindu servants were holding a solemn conclave at the back of the stage. The chef-d'oeuvre of their scenic effects was refusing to work; the bagdads that were to descend as if by Hindu magic and cover the bare walls of Sara's little attic bedroom when the good fairies, in the guise of the aforesaid servants, effected its transformation in the second act. There weren't enough of the draperies for one thing, and some of them wouldn't unroll quickly, while others threatened to tumble down on the servants' devoted heads.
”Well, we'll just have to let them go for to-night,” said Nita Reese dejectedly at last. She was chairman of the committee. ”To-morrow we'll fix them all up again, the way Madeline says is right, and you three must come over and do that part of the scene again. Is everybody ready?”