So the campus dinner-tables were patronized by young persons with heavily penciled eyebrows and brightly rouged cheeks, who ate cautiously to avoid smearing their paint and powder, and than ran up-stairs to jeer at the masculine contingent whose beards and moustaches had condemned them to privacy and scanty fare.
“I shall die of starvation,” wailed Bob Parker, when she reached the theatre, confiding her sad story to Betty. “I said I didn’t mind being a Jew and having my toes stepped on when the Christians hustle me out of court. But how can any one eat dinner with a thing like this,” and she held up her flowing beard disdainfully.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Betty absently, consulting a messy memorandum as if she expected to find directions for eating with a beard among its items. “Bob, where is Roberta Lewis? The make-up man wants her this minute. It takes ages to fix on her nose.”
“Portia is afraid she is going to be hoarse,” announced another “supe” importantly.
“Then find the doctor,” commanded Barbara Gordon swiftly, as Betty disappeared in search of Roberta. “Be careful, men. Look out for that gondola when you move the flies. Rachel, please keep the maskers off the stage.”
“Why don’t we begin?”
“Did you ever see such a mess?”
“Oh, it’s going to be a horrible fizzle. I told you the scenery was too elaborate.”
But two minutes later the “street in Venice” scene was ready and Antonio and “the Sals,” as the class irreverently styled his friends, were chatting composedly together in front of it.
The house was packed of course and there was almost as much excitement in front as there was behind the scenes. Of course the under class girls and alumnæ were delighted, but there was a distinguished critic from New York in the fifth row, and when Shylock appeared he was as enthusiastic as Mary Brooks herself. Even the cynical Richard Blake was pleased. He had come up to see the play and also, so he explained, to be a family to the bereft Madeline; but as Madeline was behind the scenes Eleanor Watson was obligingly looking after him. Her father and mother weren’t coming until Saturday, and Jim could only make a flying trip between two examinations to spend Monday in Harding, so Eleanor had plenty of spare time with which to help out her busier friends.