It was evident, as Lesbia thought sorrowfully, there was "nothing doing in that quarter". If her box did not arrive she must miss the performance, for she could not sit among a silk or crêpe de Chine clad audience in a serge skirt and a knitted jumper. She entered the cloak-room next morning in the gloomiest of spirits. She found Ermie, Kathleen, Marion, and a few others collected together talking excitedly. From their tragic tones some catastrophe had evidently just occurred.
"What's the matter?" asked Lesbia.
"Matter! Why, here's a note from Phillis to say she's in bed with bronchitis and won't be able to act 'Etaire' to-morrow. Isn't it simply sickening?" explained Marion.
"What are we to do?" groused Kathleen.
"Go and break it to Miss Lightwood, I suppose," suggested Cissie.
"Phillis might have chosen some other time to have bronchitis," mourned Calla.
Miss Lightwood received the bad news with more equanimity than her pupils. Probably she was accustomed to cope with such "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune".
"Nonsense! It's not going to spoil the whole play. I'll take good care it doesn't," she remarked briskly. "Let me see, what had Phillis to do? Two songs, three short speeches, and a figure in a dance. We can give her songs to Marjorie, and train somebody else in a hurry to take her part for the dance and the speeches. Now, who'd get it up in one rehearsal? Lesbia's the very girl. She's about Phillis's height, and can wear her costume. We'll soon teach her the dance. Fetch Lesbia at once!"
Lesbia, hastily informed of the honour in store for her, could scarcely believe her good luck. She had yearned all the term to take part in the song-drama, but her voice was not up to the required standard of merit. To hand over the musical portion of the part to Marjorie and to perform the acting and dancing herself seemed a glorious solution. Miss Lightwood was a veritable Solomon. Not only did it give her a part in the entertainment, but it solved the horrible question of her evening dress. Etaire's flame-coloured robe with its stencilled blue border would be very becoming, and she longed to wear the Celtic ornaments which she had herself manufactured. She learnt the dance and the speeches easily, and by the time the rehearsal was over everybody breathed freely, and felt secure of the success of the performance.
No boxes arrived for Lesbia on the fatal 19th of December, but she could afford to snap her fingers at fate now. Kitty and Joan Patterson went as her guests to the school party, and sat among the audience quite impressed with the excellence of the entertainment. The girls had indeed risen tremendously to the occasion. The orchestra kept in fair time and tune, drowned in any doubtful passages by Miss Bates's energy on the piano; Marjorie Johns as Uathach and Pauline Kingston as King Eochaid were the two leading voices, and sang and declaimed their parts with much dramatic fire; Nina Wakefield made quite a sensation as Ochne, the Druid, her incantation on the darkened stage creating such an atmosphere of the supernatural as to send cold shivers down the spines of the audience. Dainty Eve Orton, the nymph and sorceress of the drama, presented a "posture-measure", reminiscent of the three graces in Botticelli's picture of spring, a piece of futurist dancing, which entirely took the house by storm, and made some of the guests remark that at any rate the High School was up-to-date. Miss Tatham, watching with much approval, caught the whispered words and smiled in secret satisfaction that her visit to the Glastonbury Festival had not been in vain: the reproach of "old-fashioned" could no longer be cast at the school.