"Serena Hart!" Dundee wonderingly repeated the name of one of America's most popular and beloved stage stars.
"Yes—Serena Hart," Miss Earle repeated proudly. "She was a Forsyte girl, too, and of course she did go into the chorus herself, after she graduated in—let's see—1917, because it was the second year after I'd come to work here—and Miss Pendleton nearly died, because she was afraid Forsyte's precious prestige would be lowered, but when Serena became a star everything was grand, of course, and Forsyte was proud to claim her.... Anyway, Serena comes to the Easter play every year she can, if she isn't in a Broadway play herself, of course, and so she saw Flora acting in the Easter play in 1919, and told her she was awfully good. She was, too, but not half the actress that little Penny Crain was, when she had the lead in the play four or five years ago."
Dundee's heart begged him to ask for more details of Penny's triumph, but his job demanded that he keep the now too-voluble Miss Earle to the business in hand.
"And Flora Hackett——?" he prompted.
"Well, the next day after the play the Easter vacation began, you know, and Flora forged a letter from her father, giving her permission to spend the ten-days' Easter holiday with one of the girls who lived in Atlanta," Miss Earle continued, with great relish. "Well, sir, right in the middle of the holidays, here came her father and mother—they were both alive then—and asked for Flora! They wired the girl in Atlanta, and Flora wasn't there, and the Hacketts were nearly crazy. But as luck would have it, Mr. Hackett ran into a friend of theirs on Broadway, and this friend began to tease Mr. Hackett about his daughter's being a chorus girl!"
"A chorus girl!" Dundee echoed, taking care not to show his disappointment.
"Of course they nabbed her right out of the show, but that wasn't the worst of it!" Miss Earle went on dramatically and mysteriously. "They tried to hush it up, of course, but the word went through the school like wildfire that Flora wasn't only in the chorus, but that she was living with an actor she'd been writing fan letters to long before the Easter play went on!"
"Did you hear his name?" Dundee asked.
"No," Miss Earle acknowledged regretfully. "But I'll bet anything it was the truth!... Why, Flora Hackett was so man-crazy she flirted scandalously with every male teacher in the school. The golf 'pro' we had then got so scared of her he quit his job!"
"I suppose," Dundee prompted craftily, "she wasn't any worse than some of the other Hamilton girls."