“Certainly. There is the rear of the brush kitchen in plain sight, to convey the idea of a rustic hut. To be sure, it’s a good distance to the left, but let the audience screw round in their seats when they hear the voices, and Adam, Oliver, and Orlando can walk out carelessly, and go through their scene right there.”
“Admirable!” quoth Geoff. “We bow to your superior judgment.”
“What an inspiration that was to bring those Chinese lanterns for the Fourth of July; they have just saved us from utter ruin,” said Margery, who was quietly making leaf-trimming.
“Yes, the effect is going to be perfectly gorgeous!” exclaimed Polly, clasping her hands in anticipation. “How many have we? Ten? Oh, that’s splendid; and how many candles?”
“As many as we care to use,” Phil answered, from the top of the ladder where he was at work. “And look at my arrangement for holding them to these trees. Aren’t they immense?”
“By the way,” said Bell, “don’t forget the mossy banks under those trees, for stage seats; and make me some kind of a thing on the left side, to swoon on when I sniff Orlando’s gory handkerchief.”
“A couple of rocks,” suggested Jack.
“Not exactly,” replied the critical Rosalind, with great dignity. “I am black and blue already from practising my faint, and I expect to shriek with pain when I fall to-morrow night.”
“St. Jacob’s Oil relieves stiffened joints, smooths the wrinkles from the brow of care, soothes lacerated feelings, and ’ushes the ’owl of hinfancy,” remarked Geoffrey serenely, as he prepared to build the required mossy banks.
“My dear cousin (there are times when I am glad it is only second cousin), have you a secret contract to advertise a vulgar patent medicine? or why this eloquence?” laughed Bell.