"I will," promised Miss Adair, and turned her face on her pillow, to sleep, while Miss Lindsey took herself and her jar of cold-cream into her own cell.
"I wish I had a chance at that play! What'll she do when she sees Hawtry and Height really in action in some of those scenes?" she murmured into her own pillow.
The next morning Miss Adair rose, donned a most lovely home-spun linen gown, which was of an old ivory hue and which had been spun upon the looms of her great-great-great grandmother by that lady's slaves, crowned this toilet with the floppy hat covered with crushed roses she and Miss Lindsey and Mr. Farraday had purchased, and reported herself about an hour late at the rehearsals of "The Purple Slipper," whose authorship she had repudiated. She seated herself in the dusk of the left stage-box and bared her breast for blows. They came fast and furious, but other breasts and heads beside her own suffered. Mr. William Rooney was in full action. The entire company was on the stage in the midst of the last ensemble bit in the first act, all talking and acting with blue booklets of lines in their hands.
"Here you, Mr. Kent," roared Mr. Rooney as he rose from behind his table, at one side of which sat faithful Fido annotating his copy of the manuscript, "make up to that old lady like she was the last ham sandwich extinct and you knew you were going to be fed on alfalfa the rest of your life. Get her going, man, get her going! She's an old fool, and you know it, but you've got to have her plantation and slaves. You can keep a chorus-girl car in the garage if you just get her well fooled. Fool along, fool along!"
"'I will write the message to your son, Madam Carrington, and dispatch it forthwith by one of my own black boys. Is my hand not ever ready for your service and my wit—and also my heart?'" declaimed Mr. Kent with satisfactory fervor, as he kissed Miss Herne's fat white hand.
"Now blob, Miss Herne, blob!" directed Mr. Rooney, coming entirely from behind the table. "You are the fool of this show and don't let anybody get that away from you."
"'I pray a blessing on your excellent friendship, Judge Cheneworth, and I will rest me content in—'" Miss Herne answered in a most excellent imitation of the helplessness of an old grand dame.
"Break in there, Miss Lindsey, break in!" raved Mr. Rooney. "'Content in' is your cue. Grab it. Remember you are just the sister and only in the play to swell the list of actors on the program, so grab and keep a-grabbing if you want a place on the salary list. Now, everybody on at Miss Lindsey's lines and break up this drivel between the old birds."
"'Mother, Rosalind bids me say to you that—'"
"Crowd on everybody, crowd on, and keep things going! It will be nine o'clock by now, and we'll have to begin to feed the audience the hugging by a quarter to ten or they will go out and look elsewhere.—Say, Mr. Leigh, are your feet mates? You don't handle 'em even."