"They haven't!" proclaimed Clarence. "But 'them beautiful words!' See here, you dwellers in this happy vale, isn't there a girls' school somewhere adjacent? Why don't we bribe the teachers by making it a benefit for whatever they want—a stained glass window to their founder, or a new laboratory or something—and lift those girls bodily, as a chorus?"
They had been seeking painfully for some worthy object to give the opera for, and so far hadn't been able to find a thing. So his project was greeted joyfully.
"John, as usual, will have to go ask," suggested Allan. "Johnny, old boy, what would we do without your reputation? You physish at that school, and I hear they kiss your very shadow."
"It's probably all they get a chance at," Gail kindly helped John out.
John, who was wildly adored, as a matter of fact, by most of the fifteen-year-olds of the school, said "Nonsense!" sternly.
"Oh, do!" begged Tiddy. Tiddy was Strephon, the leading juvenile, "a fairy down to his waist," and was passionately anxious to have the whole thing go through. "If you will I'll go and see what I can yank out of my old prep school. There ought to be enough boys with changed voices and long legs——"
"Harold Gray, you are inspired!" said Gail, for once shaken out of her indolence. She had taken unto herself the part of Phyllis and was also anxious for the success of "Iolanthe." "And I myself will go with you. I'll go work my rabbit's foot on the masters. There's one over there who has already known my fatal charm."
"You mean the rabbit's foot, or——"
"I mean that one of the masters is in love with me. The classical master. We'll work him," stated Gail brutally.
"If you can make him sell you sixteen boys into slavery your fatal charm has been some use for once," said Clarence, unruffled.