Part 11 (2/2)
”Miss Amelia Minchen isn't,” said Betty, ”She just came in carrying her costume.”
”Then go and help her hurry into it,” commanded Nita peremptorily.
”Madeline, will you fix Ram Da.s.s's turban? He's untwisted it again of course. Georgie Ames, line up the Seminary girls and the Carmichael children, and see whether any of their skirts are too long. Take them down on the floor. Everybody off the stage, please, but the scene-s.h.i.+fters.”
”Oh, Nita,” cried Polly Eastman, who had just come in, rus.h.i.+ng breathlessly up to the distracted chairman, ”I'm so sorry to be late, but some people that I couldn't refuse asked me down-town to dinner. I ate and ran, really I did. And Nita, what do you think----”
”I'm much too tired to think,” returned Nita, wearily. ”What's happened now?”
”Why, nothing has actually happened, only I was at the station this afternoon, and I asked the shoe-s.h.i.+ne man about the monkey, and he hasn't heard, but he told the organ-man that the play began at half-past eight, and all the trains have been horribly late to-day, so if he should plan to get in on the eight-fifteen----”
”Have him telegraph that it begins at six,” said Nita, firmly. ”Go and see to it now.”
”Why, I did tell him to,” said Polly, sighing at the prospect of going out again. ”Only he's so irresponsible that I think we ought to decide----”
”Go and stand over him while he telegraphs,” said Nita with finality.
”We can't understudy a monkey. Josephine Boyd, come here and go through your long speech. I want to be sure that you get it right. It didn't make sense the way you said it yesterday.”
”Oh, Nita.” It was Lucile Merrifield holding out a yellow envelope.
Nita clutched it frantically. ”Perhaps she's not coming. Wouldn't I be relieved!”
”It's not a telegram,” explained Lucile, gently, ”only the proof of the programs that the printer has taken this opportune moment to send up.
The boy says if you could look at it right off, why, he could wait and take it back. They want it the first thing in the morning.”
”Give it to Helen Adams,” said Nita, turning back to Josephine. ”She can mark proof. Go on Josephine, I'm listening, and don't stop again for anybody.”
Josephine, who was the father of the large and irrepressible Carmichael family, had just finished declaiming her longest speech with praiseworthy regard for its meaning, when somebody called out, ”Ermengarde St. John isn't here yet.”
Nita sank down in Miss Amelia Minchen's armchair with a little moan of despair. ”Somebody go and get her,” she said. ”Betty Wales, you'd better go. You can dress people fastest.”
It seemed to Betty, as she hurried down-stairs and over to the Belden, that she had toiled along the same route, laden with screens, rugs and couch-covers, at least a hundred times that afternoon. She was tired and exasperated at this final hitch, and she burst into the room of the fat freshman who had Ermengarde's part with scant ceremony. What was her amazement to find it quite empty.
”Oh, she can't have forgotten and gone off somewhere!” wailed Betty.
”Why, every one was talking about the rehearsal at dinner time.”
The cast and committee included so many members of the house that it was almost depopulated, and none of the few girls whom Betty could find knew anything about the missing Ermengarde.
”I must have pa.s.sed her on the way here,” Betty decided at last, and rushed down-stairs again. As she went by the matron's door she almost ran into that lady, hurrying out.
”Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Kent,” she said. ”You haven't seen Ermengarde--that is, I mean Janet Kirk, have you?”
”No, not yet,” said Mrs. Kent briskly. ”I only heard about it five minutes ago. I'm just getting ready now to go up and take the poor child some things she's sent for.”
”But she isn't in her room,” said Betty, bewildered but certain that Mrs. Kent's apparent affection for the irresponsible Janet was very ill-bestowed.
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