The stage was draped entirely with white cheese-cloth, thickly sprinkled with gilt paper stars. A large pedestal stood ready for the Goddess, and on either side were two lower pedestals, occupied by her allegorical attendants, who, already in place, were wondering what had happened to the Goddess they were to serve.
Betty needed no instructions. She knew every pose Constance had been taught to take, as well as the lines themselves. Poising herself gracefully, she lifted her outstretched arm, with the long, slender trumpet, and placed the mouthpiece to her lips.
“Beautiful!” whispered Miss Whittier, delighted at Betty’s artistic, yet natural, pose.
“Don’t worry, Miss Whittier,” Betty whispered back; “I’ll do it all right!”
“You dear child! You’ve saved the day for us all. I know you’ll do it with credit to us all.”
Then Miss Whittier went in front of the curtain, and in a few words told of Constance’s accident, and explained that her part would be taken by Miss Elizabeth McGuire, for whom she begged indulgence if not perfect in her part.
Betty, behind the curtain, heard the applause, and thinking how surprised Jack and her mother would be, she stood motionless as the curtain rose.
Another storm of applause broke forth at the beautiful picture, and when it subsided, Betty, with just the least tremor of excitement in her voice, began:
“The Goddess of Honor I! To those who seek me I am hard to win. To those who nobly and unflinchingly do their bravest and best, I come unsummoned!”
The speech was not of great literary value; those in amateur entertainments rarely are; but Betty was a good elocutionist and full of dramatic instinct. Moreover, her sudden change from an inconspicuous figure to the chief one of all put her on her mettle, and she fairly outdid herself in rendering the opening speech.