"Choose me,—me? Oh, Hope, Hope, Hope, I don't care for anything else now,—not anything else! But, oh, can I, can I,—I'm afraid it's too hard, that it's beyond me."
"No, it isn't too hard, but I'll give you lessons; I'll practise with you every day, if you'll study hard."
"Study! I'll study every minute that I can get;" and then, quivering with excitement, Dorothea flung herself upon the floor, and, putting her head down on Hope's lap, cried brokenly,—
"Oh, Hope, Hope, how angelic of you to do this for me now, now!"
It was the last of March when this proposition was made, and the festival was to come off the last of May, that being the end of the school year at Miss Marr's; the festival itself being a sort of celebration of the year's work,—a grand general class day.
To have a special part assigned to one in the program of this day was to be specially honored, and great was the surprise when it was found that Dorothea had been thus honored.
There were two or three others—outside pupils, to be sure, but Fraulein Schiller was an outside pupil—from whom it was expected that Hope would make her choice, as they were known to be, if not particularly brilliant, yet very faithful students of the violin; and to pass these by for Dorothea was surprising indeed, and not to be explained by any mere good-nature. Hope Benham was a very good-natured girl, and had been very kind and polite to Dorothea, the little school circle decided; but they all knew how refined and fastidious and very, very sensitive she was, and what she thought about things; and if she thought seriously that Dorothea had really—really been so dreadfully loud and horrid as they had heard, she would never have chosen her to stand up there before all that festival audience with her. And arguing thus, this little world, so like the big world under like circumstances, began to re-consider things,—to think that perhaps—perhaps it might have made mistakes in ranging itself so decidedly, and that it might be well in that case to be a little less censorious in one's attitude. From this there arose a slight change of tactics,—slight, but significant enough if one were on the alert to take note of them; but Dorothea—Dorothea was no longer so sensitively alert in these directions,—for morning, noon, and night, at every regular practice hour, and sometimes at irregular ones, her fiddle bow could be heard diligently at work, under Hope's tutelage; and as she worked, as she surmounted difficulty after difficulty in the musical score, she became so absorbed in her occupation that she had little time to bestow upon other difficulties. And so, day after day, the weeks went by, and brought at last the great day they were all anticipating so anxiously,—the day of the May Festival.
It looked like the very heart of summer in the great hall at the top of the house that festival morning, for it was literally made into a perfect bower of wood and garden glories; windows, dome, aisles, and stage wreathed and hung with forest growths, and set about with flowering plants. At the back of the stage the arched doorway that led into the anteroom was so skilfully decorated that it appeared like a natural opening into some woodland way; and as the audience began to fill the seats, and there came to them through this sylvan opening a soft overture from unseen violins and piano, there was at first a hush of delight and then a general burst of applause. The group of girls who were not to take special parts and who sat together well down in front, looked at each other inquiringly. The overture was a surprise to them, as it was to all but the two or three behind the scenes.
"It is Hope's doing, of course," one girl whispered. "And of course the second violin is Dorothea!" whispered another, and then presently still another whisper arose. It was Hope's doing, of course—because—Dorothea probably had failed to perfect herself in the duet she had undertaken—or—or Hope herself perhaps had failed in her courage to—to stand up there before that festival-audience with Dorothea! This last suggestion was caught at and turned over and over, until at length it seemed to become a certainty. Yes, that was the only explanation of this little overture being sprung upon them without warning. Hope's courage had failed, and to console Dorothea in a measure, she had brought her into this new arrangement!
The little group of girls would not have owned to the disappointment that they felt as they settled down upon this explanation; but with all the Armitages, except Raymond, present in full force, every girl of the group had somehow counted upon rather a sensation when Dorothea appeared. How Bessie would stare, they had thought—Bessie, who had not been back to school since her birthday party,—how she would stare and wonder, and how surprised Mrs. Armitage would look to see the girl that she had so disapproved of brought forward so conspicuously! But now—well, things began to fall a trifle flat in the failure of such a delectable sensation, and they gave a somewhat wavering attention to what immediately followed. They brightened up, however, as Hope played her "Mayflowers," and, applauding vigorously, found time to wonder what that queer sub-title, "Ten Cents a Bunch," meant, and resolved that they would ask her sometime; and then they yawned and fidgeted, and looked at their little chatelaine watches, and craned their necks to look at the people behind them, and nodded at this one and that one, and finally fell to studying their programs, and glanced significantly, and with a little air of "I told you so," at each other, as they saw that the duet number had just been passed over. After this they settled themselves comfortably back to wait for the close of the exercises, when the best of the festival to their thinking was to come,—the meeting with their friends, the introductions to the other girls' friends, the gay talking and walking about, and the merry end of it all, when, as if by magic, the pretty bowery stage was to be converted into a sylvan tea-room, presided over by a chosen number of the school-girls.