Then he saw me. Signing Martin to stop, he called, "Come hither, sweetling." I obeyed quickly. He gave me a fiendish grin and said, "Thou'st heard our proposal from Martin. What sayest thou, wench?"
This time the shiver was in my back. It felt good. I realized I was grinning back at him, and I knew what I'd been getting ready for the last twenty minutes.
"I'm on," I said. "Count me in the company."
Sid jumped up and grabbed me by the shoulders and hair and bussed me on both cheeks. It was a little like being bombed.
"Prodigious!" he cried. "Thou'lt play the Gentlewoman in the Sleepwalking Scene tonight. Martin, her costume! Now sweet wench, mark me well." His voice grew grave and old. "When was it she last walked?"
The new courage went out of me like water down a chute. "But Siddy, I can't start tonight," I protested, half pleading, half outraged.
"Tonight or never! 'Tis an emergency—we're short-handed." Again his voice changed. "When was it she last walked?"
"But Siddy, I don't know the part."
"You must. You've heard the play twenty times this year past. When was it she last walked?"
Martin was back and yanking down a blonde wig on my head and shoving my arms into a light gray robe.