Part 56

"Fasten me up--please!"

"Does my petticoat show?"

Everybody babbled at once, and nobody listened.

"I say, let's get out of this--I'm simply roasting!"

St. Laurence seized the Gypsies by the shoulder and shoved them into the vacant gallery. They squeezed themselves, with a sigh of relief, onto a shaky flight of six narrow stairs before the breezes of an open window.

"I know exactly what ails Jelly!" Patty spoke with the air of carrying on a conversation.

"What?" asked the others, with interest.

"She's had a quarrel with that Laurence Gilroy man who is manager at the electric light place. Don't you remember how he used to be hanging about all the time? And now he never comes at all? He was out every day in the Christmas vacation. They used to go walking together--and without any chaperone, too! You would think the Dowager would have made an awful fuss, but she didn't seem to. Anyway, you should have seen the way Miss Jellings treated that man--it was per-fect-ly dreadful! The way she jumps on Irene McCullough is nothing to the way she jumped on him."

"He doesn't have to work off demerits. He's a fool to stand it," said Conny simply.

"He doesn't stand it any more."

"How do you know?"

"Well, I--sort of heard. I was in the library alcove one day in the Christmas vacation, reading the 'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' when Jelly and Mr. Gilroy walked in. They didn't see me, and I didn't pay any attention to them at first--I'd just got to the place where the detective says, 'Is that the mark of a human hand?'--but pretty soon they got to scrapping so that I couldn't help but hear, and I felt sort of embarrassed about interrupting."

"What did they say?" asked Conny, impatiently brushing aside her apologies.

"I didn't grasp it entirely. He was trying to explain about something, and she wouldn't listen to a word he said--she was perfectly horrid. You know,--the way she is when she says, 'I understand it perfectly. I don't care to hear any excuse. You may take ten demerits, and report on Saturday for extra gymnasium.'--Well, they kept that up for fifteen minutes, both of 'em getting stiffer and stiffer. Then he took his hat and went. And you know, I don't believe he ever came back--I've never seen him. And now, she's sorry. She's been as cross as a bear ever since."

"And she can be awfully nice," said Priscilla.

"Yes, she can," said Patty. "But she's too cocky. I'd just like to see that man come back, and show her her place!"

The masqueraders trooped in and the serious business of the day commenced. The school posed as a whole, then an infinity of smaller groups disentangled themselves and posed separately, while those who were not in the picture stood behind the camera and made the others laugh.

"Young ladies!" the exasperated photographer implored. "Will you kindly be quiet for just two seconds? You have made me spoil three plates. And will that monk on the end stop giggling? Now! All ready. Please keep your eyes on the stove-pipe hole, and hold your positions while I count three. One, two, three--thank you very much!"

He removed his plate with a flourish, and dove into the dark room.

It was Patty's and Conny's turn to be taken alone, but St. Ursula and her Eleven Thousand Virgins were clamoring for precedence on the ground of superior numbers, and they made such a turmoil that the two Gypsies politely stood aside.

Keren Hersey, as St. Ursula, and eleven little Junior A's--each playing the manifold part of a Thousand Virgins--made up the group. It was to be a symbolical picture, Keren explained.

When the Gypsies' turn came a second time, Patty had the misfortune to catch her dress on a nail and tear a three-cornered rent in the front. It was too large a hole for even a Gypsy to carry off with propriety; she retired to the dressing-room and fastened the edges together with white basting thread.

Finally, last of all, they presented themselves in their dirt and tatters. The photographer was an artist, and he received them with appreciative delight. The others had been patently masqueraders, but these were the real thing. He photographed them dancing, and wandering on a lonely moor with threatening canvas clouds behind them. He was about to take them in a forest, with a camp fire, and a boiling kettle slung from three sticks--when Conny suddenly became aware of a brooding quiet that had settled on the place.

"Where is everybody?"

She returned from a hasty excursion into the waiting-room, divided between consternation and laughter.

"Patty! The hearse has gone!--And the street-car people are waiting on the corner by Marsh and Elkins's."

"Oh, the beasts! They knew we were in here." Patty dropped her three sticks and rose precipitately. "Sorry!" she called to the photographer, who was busily dusting off the kettle. "We've got to run for it."

"And we haven't any coats!" wailed Conny. "Miss Wadsworth won't take us in the car in these clothes."