"Don't you do it," advised Susan. "That's precisely what she'd like you to do."
"It's a plot between Mignon and Mr. Snapwell—I mean Atwell," declared Jerry. "She's crazy to be the Princess and he is trying to help her along. A blind man could see that."
"I think so, too," said Irma Linton slowly. "You must try not to mind him, Connie, then you won't be nervous."
"Why don't you ask Laurie to interfere?" proposed Jerry. "He looked crosser than I look when I'm mad when that Atwell man was worrying you about your lines this afternoon. I'll ask him myself, if you say so."
"No." Constance shook her head. "I wouldn't for the world complain to Laurie. He has enough to think of now, without bothering his head over my troubles. I suppose I am too easily hurt. I must learn not to mind such things, if ever I expect to become a real artist."
"That's the way you ought to feel, Connie," put in Marjorie's soft voice. She had been thinking seriously, while the others talked, as to what she might say to cheer up her disconsolate schoolmate. "You were chosen to sing the part of the Princess, and I am sure no one else can sing it half so well. Try to think that, all the time you are rehearsing. Remember, Laurie believes in you, and so do we. When the great night comes you won't have to listen to that horrid Mr. Atwell's nagging, or say your lines over and over again. You will truly be the Princess, and that will make you forget everything else. If you believe in yourself, nothing can make you fail. For your own sake, don't think for a minute of giving up the part."
CHAPTER XXVI
MAKING RESTITUTION
Greatly to Mr. Ronald Atwell's chagrin, Constance Stevens began suddenly to show a marked improvement in her work that did not in the least coincide with his plans. Influenced by Mignon's tale of her wrongs, laid principally at Constance's door, albeit Marjorie, too, came in for her share of blame, he had taken a dislike to the gentle girl and lost no opportunity to humiliate her. Privately, he regarded the entire cast, Mignon included, as a set of silly children, and his only regard for Mignon lay in a wholesome respect for her father's money. At heart he was not a scoundrel, he was merely vain and selfish, and imbued with a profound sense of his own importance. It had pleased his fancy to assume the charge of the staging of the operetta, but now he was growing rather tired of it and wished that it were over.