“No, I’m afraid of them. Hand me that bottle—can you find it?—on the table there. I can’t bear to face the light. That’s it, I think. Yes, that will do, thank you. Please look at those candles. I’m sure they’re dripping all over everything.”
She took the bottle which Olive handed her, clutching it nervously as though her hope of life lay in it.
Olive had thrown off her coat and hat.
“Sit down, Olive, will you? If you are cold you’d better stand over the register. I’m simply burning up myself.” Zelda succumbed to a fit of coughing. “Have you the music, and the Christine dress? I hate awfully to disappoint Mrs. Carr, and I told her I thought I might carry your part. It isn’t so heavy as Gretchen’s. She’s going to arrange with Herr Schmidt. You’ll have to sing my part. It will do just as well for a soprano. The soprano is always the star, anyhow. You know that as well as I do,” she added petulantly, as though the subject were one of long contention between them.
“It’s horrible. It’s perfectly ghastly,” declared Olive. “I can’t sing it. I can’t sing, anyhow; and this whole show rests on you. You simply must sing your part! About all I had hoped to do was to skip around and do the light fantastic soubrette business like a little goose. To think of my attempting to sing Gretchen,—”
Olive spoke with a fierce animation as the enormity of the proposed change slowly dawned upon her.
“You can do it as well as I can—better! I’d be a perfect wooden Indian as Gretchen. I have almost as much animation as an iron hitching post. It’s either that or I won’t appear at all, and they can go to the North Pole for all me. I’m merely proposing the change as a favor to Mrs. Carr. Your liking it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to like it.”
“But the words,—I might hum the airs,—but I don’t know the words of your part.”
“Nor I yours; but they will come to you. You’ll have a chance to rehearse the part. My sewing things are on the table. We’ll fix up the duds first. About three inches off my first act skirt and a little out of the back and you’ll have it. Do you see the sewing basket anywhere?”
“The whole idea is preposterous. My things can’t be made to fit you,” said Olive, opening the suit-case.