"Of course you can," returned Mary, promptly. "Do you know any actors or actresses?"
"Oh, two or three," answered Madeline, carelessly. "Or at least father does—he knows everybody that's interesting—and I've talked to them. And once I 'suped.' It was a week when I'd been to the theatre three times, and I didn't want to ask father for any more money. So I went to the manager and got a chance to be in the mob—that's the crowd that don't have speaking parts, you know. And the people who'd promised to take me home forgot and went off to supper without me, and the leading lady heard about it and took me home in her carriage. So mother asked her to tea, and she came, and was a dear, though she couldn't act at all. I forget her name. But the family wouldn't let me go on again. They said it wouldn't do, even in Bohemia."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Mary, excitedly. "Wasn't that a lark! Madeline, do let's get up a play."
"But how can we?" objected Madeline, lazily. "Hallowe'en is over, there aren't any more elections or holidays coming, and we're not either of us on the committee for house plays. We can't just walk in and offer our services, can we?"
Mary stared at her absently. "That's so," she said. "That's the bother of being on the campus, where they have committees for everything. Oh, dear! Isn't there something we can have a play for?" Then her face lighted suddenly. "The Harding Aid! The very thing!" she shrieked, and seizing the stately Madeline around the waist, she twirled her violently across the room.
"I haven't the ghost of an idea what you are talking about," said Madeline, gravely, when she had at last succeeded in disentangling herself from Mary's bearish embraces. "But I'm with you, anyway. What shall it be?"
"Why, a—a play."
"Don't you like vaudeville shows better?" inquired Madeline, "and circuses, and nice little stunts? Girls can do that sort of thing a lot better than they can act regular plays. And besides it brings in a bigger cast and takes fewer bothering old rehearsals."
This time Mary danced a jig all by herself.
"Come over to Marion Lawrence's," she commanded, breathlessly. "She's chairman of the big Loan Fund Committee. She'll make us two a special entertainment committee, and tell the rest to let us go ahead and do what we please."