"Look here! Is this play to be part of the Latin lesson or an extra? Shall we be excused our ordinary prep.?"
"Not a line."
"Oh, what a shame! Then it's giving us double lessons. I wish Miss Harding had left us to get up a concert by ourselves."
Although the girls might grumble and make rather a fuss over learning their parts, they soon committed the little play to memory, and thanks to Miss Harding's efforts rehearsals went briskly. Jessie Macpherson, whose cleverness certainly justified her assumption of general superiority, rose to the occasion nobly, and tripped off her long speeches as if Latin were her mother tongue, to the envy and admiration of those who still halted and stumbled.
"Jessie had got through her grammar before she came to the Dower House, though," said Irene Jordan, herself a beginner. "It gives her an enormous pull to have started early."
"Boys' schools get up ever such grand Latin plays," remarked Rhoda Wilkins. "At Orton College, where my brothers go, they did the Phormio of Terence. We went to see it, and it was splendid. It took fully two hours. Ours won't take one."
"Well, one expects boys to be better at Latin."
"Some girls' schools run them hard," said Phyllis Rowland. "I know girls who can beat their brothers."
"Oh, yes, at the big High Schools, where you choose classics or modern languages, and stick to one side. At the Dower House we dabble in everything all round, maths., and science, and accomplishments thrown in as well. Well, it gives you the chance to see which you like best."
The most serious question in connection with the performance was the arrangement of the costumes. Miss Harding and the elder girls pored over illustrated Roman histories and classical dictionaries, trying to get the exact style of the period.