The first audience of the afternoon was surprised and somewhat bewildered to find that the play was not only Japanese in setting, but was also written in Japanese. At least it certainly was not English that the two actors were speaking. There was a great deal of bowing and fanning and tea-drinking, a very expressive pantomime, and a fascinating stage-setting. But what particularly interested the audience was the remarkable linguistic ability displayed by the two actors.
“I knew Madeline Ayres could talk Choctaw and Arabic and everything else under the sun,” said Christy Mason, as she passed out. “But Roberta Lewis doesn’t go in for languages. She’s rather poor in French, and she hasn’t had any German since she entered.”
“Perhaps Japanese is easy,” suggested some one.
“Oh, no!” said Christy decidedly. “All those Oriental languages are awfully hard. I have a cousin who is attached to the legation at—well, I forget just where he is, but it’s somewhere in Japan, and he told me——”
“Hurry up, please,” called the doorkeeper. “There’s a crowd outside waiting to come in.”
Christy Mason opened her purse and handed the ticket-taker a second admission fee. “I’m going to stay and see it again,” she announced. “Perhaps I can pick up an expression or two. My cousin has leave at Christmas, and it would be such fun to spring them on him.”
At the end of the second performance Christy started to rejoin her friends in a state of great excitement. She stopped by the end of the stage to tell her strange news to an incoming party. “Be sure to stay for two performances,” she advised. “They give two entirely different plays. It’s perfectly wonderful. Isn’t it, Professor Jones?” She appealed to the botany professor who was also waiting to pass out.
“Very wonderful indeed,” agreed Professor Jones. “I didn’t suppose there was a girl in college who could speak Japanese with such ease and fluency.”
They were standing close by the screens which hid the stage and the actors. At the conclusion of Professor Jones’s remark there came from behind the scenes a chuckle, followed an instant later by Roberta’s characteristic and unmistakable titter. Christy looked hard at the screens, frowned, pulled out her purse and cheerfully paid a third admission. “I want to see if they do more than two plays,” she explained, choosing a seat in the exact middle of the front row.
The third play was not the same as the first, though it was quite like it. Christy listened attentively. She heard some of the phrases that she remembered, but they did not come in at the same places. At the close of the performance she slipped in between the screens and caught the performers laughing wildly in each other’s arms.