Josephine, who was the father of the large and irrepressible Carmichael family, had just finished declaiming her longest speech with praiseworthy regard for its meaning, when somebody called out, “Ermengarde St. John isn’t here yet.”
Nita sank down in Miss Amelia Minchen’s armchair with a little moan of despair. “Somebody go and get her,” she said. “Betty Wales, you’d better go. You can dress people fastest.”
It seemed to Betty, as she hurried down-stairs and over to the Belden, that she had toiled along the same route, laden with screens, rugs and couch-covers, at least a hundred times that afternoon. She was tired and exasperated at this final hitch, and she burst into the room of the fat freshman who had Ermengarde’s part with scant ceremony. What was her amazement to find it quite empty.
“Oh, she can’t have forgotten and gone off somewhere!” wailed Betty. “Why, every one was talking about the rehearsal at dinner time.”
The cast and committee included so many members of the house that it was almost depopulated, and none of the few girls whom Betty could find knew anything about the missing Ermengarde.
“I must have passed her on the way here,” Betty decided at last, and rushed down-stairs again. As she went by the matron’s door she almost ran into that lady, hurrying out.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Kent,” she said. “You haven’t seen Ermengarde—that is, I mean Janet Kirk, have you?”
“No, not yet,” said Mrs. Kent briskly. “I only heard about it five minutes ago. I’m just getting ready now to go up and take the poor child some things she’s sent for.”
“But she isn’t in her room,” said Betty, bewildered but certain that Mrs. Kent’s apparent affection for the irresponsible Janet was very ill-bestowed.
“Of course not, my dear,” returned Mrs. Kent, serenely. “She’s at the infirmary with a badly sprained ankle. She’ll have to keep off it for a month at least, the doctor says.”