“Yes,” agreed Barbara, “he put into words what we all felt when we first heard her. Afterward we wanted so much to think she was good that we actually cheated ourselves into thinking so.”
“Do tell me what happened,” begged Rachel Morrison. She had been kept at home by a belligerent sophomore who insisted upon being tutored at her regular hour, and had arrived only just in time for Mr. Masters’s dramatic exit.
“Why, he was perfectly calm while the Shylocks were performing,” explained Barbara. “We had Jean come last because we thought that would give them all the best chance. He smiled blandly while she was going through her part and bowed her out as if she had been a second Booth. Then he sat back and looked at me and said ‘Well?’ and I said, ‘Do you like her best, Mr. Masters?’ He glared at me for a minute and then began to talk about the seriousness of giving a Shakespearean play and the confidence he’d felt in us to advise us to give this one, and the reasons why none of the girls he’d heard would do at all for Shylock. When he was through he just picked up his hat and coat and told us to go and get the other girls who tried, as he’d be ready to see them at half-past four. After that he apologized to Miss Kingston if he’d been ‘in the least abrupt’—and went.”
“And what are we to do now?” demanded Clara, wearily.
“Get them—the forlorn hopes, as he called them,” said Barbara, determined to be cheerful, “and hope that we shall be happily disappointed in them. Somebody’s got to be Shylock, you know. Betty, will you go for these three girls on Main Street?” She handed Betty a slip of paper. “Clara, will you try to find Emily Davis? Rachel, you look tired to death. Go home and rest. Josephine and I can manage the campus people.”
“There’s no use in your getting the Miller girls,” said Clara, decisively. “One lisps and the other stammers.”
“That’s true,” agreed Barbara, cheerily. “We’ll leave them out, and Kitty Lacy has gone home ill. I wish we could think of some promising people who haven’t tried at all. Eleanor Watson used to act very cleverly. Betty, do you suppose she would be willing to come and read the part?”
Betty shook her head. “I don’t think she would take a part under any circumstances, but certainly not if she had to compete with Jean. They’re such old friends.”
“How about Madeline Ayres?”
“She’s set her heart on being the Prince of Morocco,” laughed Betty, “because she wants to be blackened up. Anyway I don’t think—”