“I don’t know everything yet, Cricket. I don’t know what I’m to wear. We must know our parts perfectly in one week, and next Tuesday will be our first rehearsal. I don’t know about their letting you in, but I’m afraid they won’t. I don’t think they let anybody be there but Miss Raymond and Miss Emmet, and us actors,” with supreme importance.
“How horrid! I’ll just go somewhere and peek, then. I must see you.”
“I’ll ask Miss Emmet if you can’t come, though. She knows we are always together. But, you see, if they let in one outside girl, any number may want to come in,” said Eunice, wisely.
“That’s so,” said Cricket, with a sigh. “You tell them I’ll make myself very small and not get in anybody’s way. Where’s your book?”
“Here it is. Sallie is my part, you know.”
Cricket took the book and dropped down on the window-seat.
“Isn’t this delicious? ‘Curtain rising, discloses Sallie dusting.’ Oh, what cunning little short sentences you have to say!” After a moment’s silence: “Eunice, this won’t be anything to learn. I just about know the first page already,” and Cricket rattled it off.
For a week the family had to lunch and dine on the famous play. A stranger could not have told which was to take part, Eunice or Cricket, for the two knew it equally well. Indeed, in a week’s time, Cricket knew the whole play by heart, from reading the other characters, when she was hearing Eunice. The play was short, of course, only being about twenty-five minutes in length. The children declaimed it on the stairs; they spouted it in the parlour after dinner, and they interlarded their conversation with quotations from it. They talked professionally of entrances and exits, of wings and flies and scenery and cues, till their long-suffering family protested in a body.
Eunice had a private interview with Miss Emmet, the principal, regarding Cricket’s presence at the rehearsals. At first Miss Emmet said positively, as Eunice had feared she would, that it was against the rules for any one to be present save herself and the teacher who drilled the girls. But Eunice’s pleading face, as she urged that she and Cricket were always together in everything, and she could do it so much better if Cricket were there, because she could rehearse it with her at home, finally made Miss Emmet say, smiling:
“Well, my dear, on second thoughts, we’ll admit Jean. Only please do not tell the girls that you asked for her to be present.”