"What will satisfy him, then?" demanded the professor. "For I am determined to have that girl play Innocent Delight for me, or else I will not put on the play. I would rather shoulder the expense thus far incurred--all of it--than to go on with a lot of numskulls such as seem to have been selected for many of these important roles. For pity's sake let me have at least one girl who shows talent."

Meanwhile Madam Shaw, the prima donna, came to Agnes after it was all over and put her arms tight around the young girl's shoulders.

"Who are you, my dear?" she asked, looking kindly down upon Agnes'

blushing face.

"Agnes Kenway, ma'am."

"Oh! one of the Corner House girls!" cried the lady. "I have heard of you sisters. Three of you were in the play from the first. And why not you, before?"

"Oh!" fluttered Agnes, now waking up from the beautiful dream in which she had lived from two o'clock till five. "I am not in it--really. I cannot play the part in the opera house."

"Why not, pray?" demanded Madam Shaw in some surprise.

"Because I have broken some rules and am being punished," admitted Agnes.

Madam Shaw hid a smile quickly. "Punished at home?" she asked gravely.

"Oh, no! There is n.o.body to punish us at home."

"No?"

"No. We have no mother or father. There is only Ruth, and we none of us want to displease Ruth. It wouldn't be fair."

"Who is Ruth?"

"The oldest," said Agnes. "She is in the play. But she hasn't a very important part. I think she might have been given a better one!"

"But _you_? Who is punishing you? Your teacher?"

"Mr. Marks."

"No? Not really?"

"Yes. The basket ball team and some other girls can only look on--we can't act. He said so. And--and we deserve it," stammered Agnes.

"Oh, indeed! But does the poor Carnation Countess deserve it?" demanded Madam Shaw, with asperity. "I wonder what Mr. Marks can be thinking of?"

However, everybody seemed to feel happier and less discouraged about the play when this rehearsal was over; and Agnes went home in a seventh heaven of delight.

"I don't care so much now if I never have a chance again," she said, over and over again. "I've _shown_ them that I can act."

But Ruth began to be anxious. She said to Mrs. MacCall that evening: "Suppose, when Agnes gets older, she should determine to be a player?

Wouldn't it be _awful_?"

The old Scotch woman bit off her thread reflectively. "Tut, tut!" she said, at last. "That's borrowing trouble, my dear. And you're a bit old-fashioned, Ruthie Kenway. Perhaps being an actress isn't so awful a thing as we used to think. 'Tis at least a way of earning one's living; and it seems now that all girls must work."

"Didn't they work in your day, Mrs. MacCall?" asked Ruth, slyly.

"Not to be called so," was the prompt reply. "Those that had to go into mills and factories were looked down upon a wee bit, I am afraid. Others of us only learned to scrub and cook and sew and stand a man's tantrums for our living. It was considered more respectable to marry a bad man than to work for an honest wage."

Sat.u.r.day Agnes was not called upon at all. She heard that Trix was at home again; but there were no rehearsals of the speaking parts of _The Carnation Countess_. Only the dances and ensembles of the choruses were tried out in the afternoon.

The girls heard nothing further regarding the re-distribution of the parts--if there were to be such changes made. They only understood that the play would be given, in spite of the director's recent despairing words.

And it was known, too, that the following rehearsals would be given on the stage of the opera house itself. The scenery was ready, and on Sat.u.r.day morning of the next week the first costume rehearsal would be undertaken.

Dot and her little friends were quite over-wrought about their bee dresses. They had learned to dance and "drone" in unison; now they were all to be turned into fat brown bees, with yellow heads and stripes on their papier-mache bodies, and transparent wings.

Tess, as Swiftwing, the chief hummingbird, was a brilliant sight indeed.

Only one thing marred Tess Kenway's complete happiness. It was Miss Pepperill's illness.

For the unfortunate teacher was very ill at her boarding house. Her head had been hurt when the automobile knocked her down. And while her broken bones might mend well, Dr. Forsyth was much troubled regarding the patient.

The Corner House girls heard that Miss Pepperill was quite out of her head. She babbled about things that she never would have spoken of in her right mind. And while she had so vigorously refused to be taken to the Women's and Children's Hospital when she was hurt, she talked about Mrs. Eland, the matron, a good deal of the time.

"I'm going to see my Mrs. Eland and tell her that Miss Pepperill asks for her and if she has found her sister," Tess announced, after a long conference with the teacher's landlady, who was a kindly, if not very wise maiden lady.

"I see no harm in your telling Mrs. Eland," Ruth agreed. "Perhaps Mrs.

Eland would go to see her, if it would do the poor thing any good."

"Why do you say 'poor thing' about Miss Pepperill, Ruthie?" demanded Dot, the inquisitive. "Has she lost all her money?"

"Goodness me! no, child," replied the oldest Corner House girl; nor did she explain why she had said "poor thing" in referring to the sick teacher. But everybody was saying the same; they did not expect her to live.

The subst.i.tute teacher who took Miss Pepperill's place in school had possibly been warned against Sammy Pinkney; for that embryo pirate found, at the end of the first day of such subst.i.tution, that he was no better off than he had been under Miss Pepperill's regime.

Tess was very serious these days. She was troubled about the teacher who was ill (for it was the child's nature to love whether she was loved in return or no), her lessons had to be kept up to the mark, and, in addition, there was her part as Swiftwing.

She knew her steps and her songs and her speeches, perfectly. But upon the Sat.u.r.day morning when the dances were rehea.r.s.ed, Tess found that there was more to the part than she had at first supposed.

There was to be a tableau in which--at the back of the stage--Swiftwing in glistening raiment, was the central figure. A light scaffolding was built behind a gaudy lace "drop" and to the steps of this scaffolding, from the wings on either side of the stage, the birds and b.u.t.terflies flew in their brilliant costumes to group themselves back of the gauze of the painted drop.

Tess was a bit terrified when she was first taken into the flies, for Swiftwing first of all was to come floating down from above to hover over and finally to rest upon a great carnation.

Of course, Tess saw that she was to stand quite securely upon the very top step of the scaffolding. A strong wire was attached to her belt at the back so that she could not possibly fall.

Below, and on either side of Tess, was a smaller girl, each costumed as a b.u.t.terfly. These were tossed up to their stations by the strong arms of stage-hands. They could not be held by wires as Tess was, for their wings were made to vibrate slowly all through the scene.

On lower steps others of the brilliantly dressed children--all b.u.t.terflies and winged insects--were grouped. From the front the picture thus formed was a very beautiful one indeed; but the children had to go over and over the scene to learn to do their part skillfully and to secure the right effect from the front.

"Aren't you scared up there, little girl?" one of the women playing in the piece asked Tess.

"No-o," said the Corner House girl, slowly. "I'm not scared. But I shall be glad each time when the tableau is over. You see, these other little girls have no belt and wire to hold them, as I have."

"But you are so much higher than the others!"

"No, ma'am. It only looks so. It's what the stage man said was an optical delusion," Tess replied, meaning "illusion." "I can touch those other girls on either side of me--yes, ma'am."