Brenda's cousin at Radcliffe

by Helen Leah Reed

“Hundreds of dollars!” she cried. “My dreams have been filled with them since yesterday, and we have sold nearly all our tickets.”

“But there will be expenses, dear child. You mustn’t forget that,” said Polly, who was one of the group.

“Oh, of course, but there will be enough left. I’m glad, too, that the whole performance will be so creditable, and we ought to be thankful enough that no one has been ill, or for any other reason obliged to give up her part. Anything like that would drive me to distraction, for we have no understudies.”

“Oh,” said Julia, “every one has given every one else so much advice that I am sure that any one who has watched the rehearsals could take the part of some other girl at a moment’s notice.”

“I’m not so sure,” responded Ruth, accepting her friend more seriously than the latter intended. “One or two of the parts might, perhaps, be taken, but not Polly’s. She puts a new touch in at almost every rehearsal, and honestly, I think that she has made the thing the success that it is. Excuse me, Julia, I didn’t mean that we owe more to the performers than to the composer.”

“Why, indeed,” replied Julia, “I understand exactly what you mean, and it is fortunate that Polly’s father was not as ill as she feared a week or two ago, for if she had had to go South it would have made a great difference to us.”

Nor were the girls wrong in their expectations. The dress rehearsal went off with all the sparkle and life that they had hoped. The regular performance they felt to be a more trying occasion than the rehearsal, for the audience included so many persons from Boston, as well as from Cambridge, whose judgment carried great weight. But critical or not, they were thoroughly appreciative of the pretty operetta. More than once were the singers and actors called before the curtain; and had Julia not been too modest, she, too, would have answered the calls that were made for her. Some of those who were not ardent admirers of Annabel were pleased that she did not—apparently could not—eclipse Polly and Clarissa. Sweet though her voice was, it was not powerful, and her self-consciousness often spoiled the effect of her acting. Brenda, of course, was at the play, and a large party of her gay young friends from the City. In the party were Tom and Will and a number of college men, and Julia, sitting among them, felt that she was almost as merry in spirit as they. Yet more than the praises of these young people, Julia appreciated those of her uncle and aunt who sat in the tier of seats just behind; for her aunt was apparently satisfied by the commendation she received for the operetta that her devotion to her work was not going to separate her entirely from young people of her own age.

“But this operetta, my dear, is on the whole so frivolous that I have some hope that college is not going to deprive you entirely of your interest in society.”

At the close of the performance, as the actors stood behind the scenes listening to the commendations of their friends, a telegraph messenger pushed his way among them with a dispatch for Polly.

Polly’s color faded as she heard him ask for her, and she turned to Julia with an appealing “Read it” as she laid the slip of yellow paper in her hand.