Part 37

"If it comes off as easily as that, you'll be more fortunate than most of the people I make up"; and Patty smiled knowingly as she remembered how Priscilla had soaked half the night on the occasion of a previous play, and then had appeared at breakfast the next morning with lowering eyebrows and a hectic flush on each cheek. "You must remember that foot-lights take a lot of color," she explained condescendingly. "You'd look ghastly if I let you go the way you wanted to at first. Next!

"No," said Patty, as the butler presented himself; "you don't come till the second act. I'll take the Irate Parent first." The Irate Parent was dragged from a corner where he had been anxiously mumbling over his lines. "What's the matter?" asked Patty, as she began daubing in wrinkles with a liberal hand; "are you afraid?"

"N-no," said the Parent; "I'm not afraid, only I'm afraid that I will be afraid."

"You'd just better change your mind, then," said Patty, sternly. "We aren't going to allow any stage-fright to-night."

"Patty, you can manage Georgie Merriles; make her let me go on without any wig," cried Cynthia, returning and holding up to view a mass of yellow curls of a shade that was never produced in the course of nature.

Patty looked at the wig critically. "It is, perhaps, a trifle golden for the part."

"Golden!" said Cynthia. "It's positively orange. Wait till you see how it lights up. He calls me his dark-eyed beauty: and I'm sure no one with dark eyes, or any other kind of eyes, would have hair like that. My own looks a great deal better."

"Why don't you wear your own, then? Wrinkle up your forehead, Parent, and let me see which way they run."

"Georgie paid two dollars for renting it, and she's bound to get the money's worth of wear out of it, even if she makes me look like a fright and spoils the play."

"Nonsense," said Patty, pushing away the Parent and giving her undivided attention to the question. "Your own hair does look better. Just mislay the wig and keep out of Georgie's way till the curtain goes up. The audience are beginning to come," she announced to the room in general, "and you've got to keep still back there. You're making an awful racket, and they can hear you all over the house. Here, what are you making such a noise for?" she demanded of Lord Bromley, who came clumping up with footfalls which reverberated through the flies.

"I can't help it," he said crossly. "Look at these boots. They're so big that I can step out of them without unlacing them."

"It's not my fault. I haven't anything to do with the costumes."

"I know it; but what can I do?"

"Never mind," said Patty, soothingly; "they don't look so awfully bad. You'll have to try and walk without raising your feet."

She went out on the stage, where Georgie was giving her last directions to the scene-shifters. "The minute the curtain goes down on the first act change this forest to the drawing-room scene, and don't make any noise hammering. If you have to hammer, do it while the orchestra's playing. How does it look?" she asked anxiously, turning to Patty.

"Beautiful," said Patty. "I'd scarcely recognize it."

The "forest scene" had served in every outdoor capacity for the last four years, and it was usually hailed with a groan on the part of the audience.

"I was just coming in to see if the cast were ready," said Georgie.

"They're all made up, and are sitting in the green-room getting stage-fright. What shall I do now?"

"Let me see," said Georgie, consulting her book. "One of the committee is to prompt, one is to stay with the men and see that they manage the curtain and the lights in the right places, one is to give the cues, and two are to help change costumes. Cynthia has to change from a riding-habit to a ball-gown in four minutes. I think you'd better help her, too."

"Anything you please," said Patty, obligingly. "I'll stand on a stool with the ball-gown in the air ready to drop it over her head the moment she appears, like a harness on a fire-horse. Is everything out here done? What time is it?"

"Yes; everything's done, and it's five minutes of eight. We can begin as soon as the audience is ready."

They peered through the folds of the heavy velvet curtain at the sea of faces in front. Eight hundred girls in light evening-gowns were talking and laughing and singing. Snatches of song would start up in one corner and sweep gaily over the house, and sometimes two would meet and clash in the center, to the horror of those who preferred harmony to volume.

"Here come the old girls!" said Patty, as a procession of some fifty filed into reserved seats near the front. "There are loads of last year's class back. What are the juniors doing? Look; I believe they are going to serenade them."

The juniors rose in a body, and, turning to their departed sister class, sang a song notable for its sentiment rather than its meter.

"I do hope it will be a success," sighed Georgie. "If it doesn't come up to last year's senior play I shall die."

"Oh, it will," said Patty, reassuringly. "Anything would be better than that."

"Now the glee club's going to sing two songs," said Georgie. "Thank heaven, they're new!" she added fervently. "And the orchestra plays an overture, and then the curtain goes up. Run and tell them to come out here, ready for the first act."