Betty Wales, Senior Part 11

"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?"

"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.