“You don’t know what you are talking about, Mollie Mavourneen, because you haven’t heard my news, since I only learned it to-day in town. It can’t affect Betty or you or any of the other girls as it does me, because you haven’t been yearning ever since you were born to go on the stage as I have until the very thought of the footlights and the smell of the theater makes me hungry and dizzy and frightened and so happy!”
“You haven’t been in the theater a dozen times in your life, Polly O’Neill,” Mollie returned, looking even more serious than before remembering her mother’s opposition and her own to Polly’s theatrical ambition, “and you know nothing in the world about what the life means.”
“Well, I will know pretty soon, Mollie. You see I am sixteen now, almost seventeen. I will be through school in another year—and then—why if I have any talent mother must be persuaded to let me study and see what I can do. And thereby hangs my tale!”
Two vivid spots of color were burning on Polly’s high cheek bones, her eyes were shining as though she saw only the joys of the career she hoped to choose for herself and none of its hardships, and she had to hold her thin nervous hands tight together to try to control her excitement.
“Don’t tell, please, Betty, I am waiting to get more breath,” Polly pleaded, and Betty nodded reassuringly. Not for worlds would she have stolen this particular clap of thunder from her friend, and it was rather a habit with Polly not to be able to breathe very deeply when she was much agitated.
“When Betty and I drove into town this morning,” she said in the next instant, “you know we stopped by Miss Adams’ to go over our Christmas rehearsals with her.” (Miss Adams was the teacher of elocution at the Woodford High School and greatly interested in Polly.) “Well, when we had finished and she had told Betty of half a dozen mistakes she was making and me of something less than a hundred, she said slowly but with a kind of peculiar expression all the time, ‘Girls, I wonder if you will be willing for me to bring a guest to your Christmas Camp Fire play?’ Betty answered, ‘Yes’ very politely, though you know we have asked more people already than we will ever have room for, but as I was mumbling over some lines of a speech I didn’t say anything. Then Miss Adams looked straight at me and said slowly just like this: ‘I am very glad indeed, Polly, for your sake, You remember that I have often spoken to you of a cousin of mine (we were like sisters when we were little girls) who is now one of the most famous, if not the very most famous, actress in this country. We write each other constantly and several times I have spoken to her about you. This very morning I had a letter from her saying she was tired and as she was to have a week’s holiday at Christmas might she come down and spend it with me if I would promise not to let anybody know who she was nor make her see any company.’ My heart had been pounding just like this,” Polly continued, making an uneven, quick movement with her hand, “but when Miss Adams ended in this cruel fashion it must have stopped, because I remember I couldn’t speak and felt myself turn pale. And then my beloved Betty saved me! She answered in just a little bit frightened voice. ‘But you think, Miss Adams, that you may be able to persuade your cousin to come to our play, if we don’t talk about it or let other people worry her, and then she can tell whether Polly has any real talent for the stage or whether we think so just because she wishes us to.’”
At the end of this long speech Polly may have lost her breath. Anyhow, she became frightened and stopped talking, staring instead into the open fire.
“It will be a great trial for the rest of us to have the great Miss Margaret Adams watching us act our poor little Camp Fire play,” Betty continued, “but I am sure we must all be glad to have her for Polly’s sake.”
After this there was silence for a moment, so that the noise of the old clock ticking above the mantel could be distinctly heard.
Then the new guardian shook her head. “I am sorry, Polly, but I am afraid that having Miss Adams talk to you about your future, whether she encourages you or not, will not be right without your mother’s consent.” Rose knew Mrs. O’Neill very well and understood how she dreaded the life of the stage for Polly’s emotional and none too well-balanced temperament. Polly’s fashion of living on her nerves rather than on any reserve of physical strength would be a serious drawback. For a moment the older woman wished that she might be able to accede to this Christmas experiment and that the great actress might be wise enough to recognize Polly’s unfitness for acting and persuade her to dismiss the entire idea from her mind.