"Blue Bonnet—you mustn't go to pieces like this—it's dreadful! Try to calm yourself and think of your lines. You'll be all right in a minute—just as soon as you're on the stage. I know you're going to do well. This awful nervousness is a part of the game—it's the artistic temperament."
And so it proved. Blue Bonnet had scarcely spoken her first line before fear fled to the winds. Her own personality fell from her like a mantle. She was Oonah, the bewitching little Irish maiden, on her way from Dublin to make her home with her grandmother in the country. In her hand she held the "twig of thorn," which, having been plucked on the first day of spring, had thrown her under the spell of the fairies. Around her shoulders she wore the peasant's cape with its quaint, becoming hood, and as she threw it off there was a smothered exclamation from the audience, for the vision was one of startling loveliness. Her hair was caught loosely and hung in many ringlets; her eyes were large and luminous with the excitement of the moment, and her pretty brogue—slaved over for weeks—captivated all listeners.
Blue Bonnet, quite unaware of her triumph, was overwhelmed at the end of the performance to hear her name called uproariously from the audience and fled to the far end of the wings, from which she was rescued unceremoniously by two insistent fairies, who brought her to the footlights to acknowledge the tribute of friends and admirers.
But it was after the play, when the teachers had left the room, and the chairs had been drawn around the table that the real fun of the evening began. It was then that the presidents of the two classes made speeches that were masterpieces of diplomatic art, and the Seniors contributed their share of entertainment with rare stunts. The eccentricities of teachers were taken off in a way that convulsed the entire gathering; the Junior class song was sung for the first time, and midnight crept on without any one dreaming of its approach until faithful John, the janitor, announced it from the door exactly on the stroke of twelve.
With sighs and regrets that anything so altogether heavenly as a "spread" should have an end, the girls moved out of the old gymnasium sorrowfully, realizing that one of their happiest evenings had passed into history.
CHAPTER XXI
THE LAMBS' FROLIC
School-days cannot last forever. The fact was borne in on Annabel Jackson as she sat in her room one afternoon shortly before Commencement. It wasn't going to be such an easy thing to tear up root and leave Miss North's after four years as she had imagined. How was she ever going to get along without the girls? There was Sue—dear old, impulsive, warm-hearted Sue, companion in so many escapades. And Ruth, and Wee Watts—Blue Bonnet, too! The parting was going to be especially hard with Blue Bonnet. She would in all probability disappear on the Texas ranch, and except for an occasional Christmas greeting or birthday card, pass out of her life altogether.