"I give it up for to-day," he cried. "You all act like a set of puppets. Pray, pray, young ladies! try to get into the spirit of your parts by next Friday. Otherwise, I shall be tempted to recommend that the whole play be given up. We do not want to go before the Milton public and make ourselves ridiculous."
Neale said to Agnes as he walked home with her: "Why don't you learn the part of Innocent Delight? I bet you couldn't do it so much better than Trix, after all."
She looked at him with scorn. "Learn it?" she repeated. "I know it by heart—and all the other girl's parts, too. I've acted them all out in my room before the mirror." She laughed a little ruefully. "Lots of good it does me, too! And Ruth says I will have to sleep in another room, all by myself, if I don't stop it.
"If I couldn't do the part of Innocent Delight better than Trix Severn——"
She left the remainder of the observation to his imagination.
The Thanksgiving recess was to last only from Wednesday afternoon till the following Monday morning. Friday and Saturday would be taken up with rehearsals—mostly because of the atrociously bad acting of some of the girls.
The holiday itself, however, was free. Dinner was to be a joyous affair at the old Corner House. There were but two guests expected: Mr. Howbridge and Neale. Mr. Howbridge, their uncle's executor, and the Kenway sisters' guardian, was a bachelor, and he felt a deep interest in the Corner House girls. Of course, Agnes begged to have Neale come.
In the Stower tenements in Meadow Street there was great rejoicing, too. Mr. Howbridge's own automobile had taken around the Thanksgiving baskets and the lawyer's clerk delivered them and made a brief speech at each presentation. The Corner House girls could not attend, for they were too busy in school and (at least, three of them) with their parts in the play. But Sadie Goronofsky reported the affair to Tess in these expressive words:
"Say! you'd oughter seen my papa's wife and the kids. You'd think they'd never seen anything to eat before—an' we always has a goose Passover week. My! it was fierce! But there was so much in that basket that it made 'em all fair nutty. You'd oughter seen 'em!"
Mrs. Kranz, the "delicatessen lady," as Dot called her, and Joe Maroni, helped fill the baskets. They were the two "rich tenants" on the Stower estate, and the example of the Corner House girls in generosity had its good effect upon the lonely German woman and the voluble Italian fruiterer.