"Are you talking of the would-be murderess, who froze us all out Thanksgiving Day?" asked Hippy. "What is her latest crime?"
Grace felt like saying "Destroying other people's property and getting innocent folks disliked," but refrained. She had told no one of her interview with Miss Thompson. Grace knew that the principal was still displeased with her. She was no longer on the old terms of intimacy with Miss Thompson. A barrier seemed to have sprung up between them, that only one thing could remove, but Grace was resolved not to expose Eleanor—not that she felt that Eleanor did not richly deserve it, but she knew that it would mean instant expulsion from school. She believed that Eleanor had acted on the impulse of the moment, and was without doubt bitterly sorry for it, and she felt that as long as Eleanor had at last begun to be interested in school, the thing to do was to keep her there, particularly as Mrs. Gray had recently told her of Miss Nevin's pleasure at the change that the school had apparently wrought in Eleanor.
Could Grace have known what Eleanor was engaged in at the moment she would have felt like exposing her without mercy.
During the first rehearsals Grace, secretly fearing an outbreak on Eleanor's part, had been on the alert, but as rehearsals progressed and Eleanor kept strictly to herself, Grace relaxed her vigilance.
Directly after the chums had hurried out of the hall to meet the boys, Miss Tebbs had decided that opening the dressing room on the other side of the stage would relieve the congestion and insure a better chance for all to dress. Calling to the girls who still remained to move their belongings to that side, Miss Tebbs hurried across the stage to find the janitor and see that the door was at once unlocked. By the time the door was opened and the lights turned on the remaining girls flocked in, their arms piled high with costumes.
Foremost among them was Eleanor. Hastily depositing her own costumes in one corner of the dressing room, she darted across the stage and into the room from which she had just moved her effects.
It was empty. She glanced quickly about. Like a flash she gathered up a pile of costumes marked "Rosalind," covered them with her long fur coat and ran through the hall and down the steps to where her runabout was stationed. Crowding them hastily into the bottom of the machine, she slipped on her coat, made ready her runabout and drove down the street like the wind, not lessening her speed until she reached the drive at "Heartsease."
The young people passed a merry hour at Nora's, indulging in one of their old-time frolics, that only lacked Tom Gray's presence to make the original octette complete.
"We'll be in the front row to-morrow night," said Hippy, as the young folks trooped out to the car. "I have engaged a beautiful bunch of green onions from the truck florist, Reddy has put all his money into carrots of a nice lively color, the exact shade of his hair, while I have advised Davy here to invest in turnips. They are nice and round and hard, and will hit the stage with a resounding whack, providing he can throw straight enough to hit anything. He can carry them in a paper bag and——"