"Better call Laurie Armitage," suggested one girl. "She can't possibly go on. Harriet Delaney will have to take her place. Mignon isn't even dressed for her part. Where do you suppose——" The senior did not finish her sentence. Something in the familiar details of the gown Mignon wore aroused an unpleasant suspicion in her active brain. A swift-footed messenger had already sped away to find the young composer, who, with the departure of Ronald Atwell had taken the arduous duties of stage manager upon his capable shoulders.
When the information of Mignon's collapse reached him, he made no move to go to her. Instead, he beckoned to Harriet Delaney, who had just come upstairs, and whispered a few words to her which caused her colorful face to pale, then turn pinker than usual.
"But I haven't a suitable costume," several girls heard her protest.
"Go on as you are. Your costume is suitable," reassured Laurie.
But down in the dressing room Mignon had struggled to her feet. The knowledge that her unfairness was to cost her her own part in the operetta aroused her to action. In feverish haste she began to tear off the gown she wore.
"Second act," rang out through the corridor. With a low wail of genuine grief, Mignon dropped into a chair. She heard Harriet Delaney begin her first song. Unable to bear the chagrin that was hers, she sprang up. Readjusting the gown she had partly thrown off, she seized her cloak and wrapped it about her. Then she fled up the stairway, and into the calm, starlit night to where her runabout awaited her, the victim of her own wrong-doing.
It was a happy trio of girls that, shortly before midnight, climbed into the Deans' automobile, in which Mr. and Mrs. Dean sat patiently awaiting their exit from the stage door. Lawrence Armitage's operetta had been an artistic as well as a financial success. It had been a "Standing Room Only" audience, and the proceeds were to be given to the Sanford Hospital for Children. Laurie had decreed this as a quiet memento to Constance's devotion to little Charlie during his days of infirmity. The audience had not been chary of their applause. The principals had received numerous curtain calls, Constance had received an enthusiastic ovation, and many beautiful floral tokens from her admiring friends. Laurie had been assailed with cries of "Composer! Speech! Speech!" and had been obliged to respond. Even the chorus came in for its share of approbation, and to her intense amazement Marjorie Dean received two immense bouquets of roses, a fitting tribute to her fresh, young beauty. One of them bore Hal Macy's card, the other she afterward learned was the joint contribution of a number of her school friends.
Only one person left the theatre that night who did not share in the enthusiasm of the Sanford folks over the creditable work of their town boys and girls. Mignon La Salle's father had, for once, put business aside and come out to hear his daughter sing. Why she had not appeared on the stage, he could not guess. His first thought was that she had told him an untruth, but the printed programme carried her name as a principal. He arrived home to be greeted with the servant's assertions that Miss La Salle was ill and had retired. Going to her room to inquire into the nature of her sudden illness, he was refused admittance, and shrewdly deciding that his daughter had been worsted in a schoolgirl's dispute in which she appeared always to be engaged, he left her to herself. It was not until long afterward, when came the inevitable day of reckoning, which was to make Mignon over, that he learned the true story of that particular night.
It had been arranged beforehand that Constance was to spend the night with Marjorie. Shortly after Charlie had been comfortably established in Constance's dressing room, Uncle John Roland had appeared at the stage door of the theatre, his placid face filled with genuine alarm. He had been left in charge of Charlie, and the child had eluded his somewhat lax guardianship and run away. Finding the little violin missing, he guessed that the boy had made his usual attempt to find the theatre, and the old man had hastened directly there. Charlie was sent home with him, despite his wailing plea to remain, thus leaving Constance free to carry out her original plan.