“Oh, Miss Wales! Come right in out of the cold, you poor child.” Mrs. Post’s kindly voice broke into the tête-à-tête by the back door. “I’m so sorry I forgot you. Come and have some supper and hear about the wonderful play. I’m giving the girls a little treat to make them sleep better after all the excitement.”
The Belden-Morton production of “The Purple Ribbon” had been a grand success. Georgia Ames, Fluffy Dutton, and the Mystery had collaborated in writing it, and the program announced that it was a subtle combination of Shaw, Shakespeare, and Sherlock Holmes. The Morton Hall half of the cast, still in make-up and costumes, lined up for Betty’s appreciative inspection. The Thorn was the villain of the piece, in very elegant evening clothes and curling black moustaches. The twin Digs figured respectively as the villain’s innocent young accomplice (white flannels and very pink cheeks), and the heroine’s mother-in-law (Mrs. Post’s second best black silk, a bonnet with strings, and white mitts). The Mystery had fairly insisted that the freckle-faced girl who roomed next to her should have a part, “because she wants it so awfully much.” So she had been cast for the Enigma, who had nothing particular to do but wear a blank and unintelligent expression and say, “Is it so?” at intervals. This she had done so effectively that she had made the hit of the evening. Mrs. Post and the none-acting members of Morton Hall explained all this eagerly to Betty, and then Connie was called into the line because she had been the Bell and the Noise Without.
“And I was the only one of the cast that had to be prompted,” Connie confessed sadly. “I was thinking how awfully pretty my roommate looked in black, and if Georgia hadn’t poked me hard——”
“Why, where’s Amanda O’Toole?” cut in the Thorn suddenly. “She was Amanda the maid, Miss Wales, and she did look too cute—— Oh, there you are, Marie. Come and let Miss Wales see how you look in the raiment of servitude.”
Marie had borrowed her costume complete from the obliging Belden House Annie, adding nothing but a dashing moline bow under her chin.
“Ain’t she the prettiest Amanda that ever came down the pike?” quoted the Thorn from her part, with a genial twirl of her huge moustaches.
“I sure am, but it’s no concern of yours, Monsieur,” retorted Marie, from her part, flirting her black skirt coquettishly as she made for a plate of sandwiches. “Isn’t Mrs. Post the nice lady? I’m as hungry as a bear—I couldn’t eat any dinner because I was so excited about the play.”
“If you were so hungry, why didn’t you come in here sooner?” demanded the Thorn incisively. “The rest of us are all through eating.”
“Oh, I was fussing around. This is the first time I was ever on the stage, you see, and I’m that rattled.” Montana Marie took a huge bite out of one of Mrs. Post’s ginger-cookies by way of closing the discussion.
Betty went to bed humming a gay little tune. She was thinking of the house-play that Roberta Lewis had starred in so splendidly years ago, of the Coach and Six, of the Student’s Aid meeting in the morning,—she must get up early to write her report,—and finally of Jim Watson’s comical struggle between strong personal annoyance at her having added another to her too-numerous interests and responsibilities and his equally strong artistic approval of Madeline’s ideas for the Coach and Six and of Mr. Morton’s lavishness in carrying them out.