"No," returned Abby; "but my brother Larry thought so. And if it looks that way even to a little boy like him, I think I would rather not pretend to be Queen."
"A May piece without a Queen! Why, it would be like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out!" declared Marion. "Did you not think that if you declined the part we might give it to some one else?"
Abby colored and was silent. This had, indeed, been the hardest part of the struggle with herself. But there was an element of the heroic in her character. She never did anything by halves; like the little girl so often quoted, "when she was good, she was very, very, good."
Marion stood a moment looking at her. "And do you really mean," she said at length, "that you are ready to give up the role you were so delighted with yesterday, and the satisfaction of queening it over your companions if only for an hour?—that you are willing to make the sacrifice to honor the Blessed Virgin?"
With some embarrassment, Abby admitted that this was her motive.
A sudden thought occurred to Marion. "Then, Abby, you shall!" said she. "I'll arrange it; but don't say a word about it to any one. Let the girls think you are to be Queen, if they please. Why, missy," she went on, becoming enthusiastic, "it is really a clever idea for our drama. We shall have a lovely May piece, after all."
Marion hastened away, intent upon working out the new plan which her quick fancy had already sketched in outline. To be sure, she and Ellen had devised a different one, and agreed that each should write certain scenes. Ellen had taken the first opportunity that morning to whisper that she had devoted to the drama all the previous evening and an hour before breakfast. Marion, indeed, had done the same.
"But it will not make any difference. We can change the lines a little," she said to herself, after reading the manuscript, which Ellen passed to her at the hour of German study,—a time they were allowed to take for this particular composition.
Ellen, however, thought otherwise.
"What! another plan for the May piece!" she said, when Marion mentioned the subject. "Why, see all I've written; and in rhyme, too!"