“He wasn’t,” explained Barbara Gordon, “but he found he could get off better to-day. It’s only for the Shylocks and Portias, you know. We can’t do much until they’re definitely decided, so we can tell who is left for the other parts.”
“Gratiano and the Gobbos will come in the next lot,” sighed Teddie. “Seems as if I should die to be out of it all!”
Jean Eastman was just ahead of them in the crowd. “Poor Teddie!” Barbara began, “I only wish—-” She broke off abruptly. She didn’t want Jean for Shylock, but it would have been the height of impropriety to let even Teddie, whose misfortunes made her a privileged person, know it. “It’s a perfect shame,” she went on hastily. “You don’t feel half so bad about it as we do.”
Ted stared incredulously. “Don’t I? I say, Barbara, did you know there was a girl in last year’s cast who had had a condition at midyears? She kept still and somehow it wasn’t reported to Miss Stuart until very late, and by that time it would have made a lot of trouble to take her out. So they hushed it up and she kept her part. A last year’s girl wrote me about it.”
“I don’t believe she had much fun out of it, do you, Ted?” asked Barbara. “Anyhow I’m sure you—”
“Oh, of course not,” interrupted Ted with emphasis.
“What in the world are you two talking about?” demanded Jean Eastman curiously, dropping back to join them.
“Talking play of course!” laughed Barbara, trying to be extra cordial because she had so nearly said a disagreeable thing a minute before.
Meanwhile Ted, who felt that she should break the tenth commandment to atoms if she stayed in Jean’s neighborhood another minute, slipped off down a side hall and joined a group of her classmates who were bound like herself for Miss Raymond’s English novelists. They were talking play too, of course,—it was in the air this morning,—and they welcomed Ted joyously and deferred to her opinion as that of an expert.
“Who’ll be Shylock, Teddie?” demanded Bob Parker. “That’s the only thing I’m curious about.”