Evelyn clutched at the sound, but it slipped from her, and she wildly began,
"Argosies float on my bosom (Slap, slap)
And sheeps of flits—and sheeps of flits——"
She burst into tears, and turning a spiteful face toward one of the boxes, she cried,
"You stop making faces at me, Jessie Winterbottom."
Then she fled to the wings.
This served to bring to the attention of the audience the fact that a strange thing had happened: Felix Winterbottom and his family had come to the pageant. He was there, concealed as far as possible by the red plush curtains of the box, defiant and forbidding. From the glance he now and then cast at the decolleté back of his wife, it was evident that he had not come voluntarily.
Mrs. Pottle, in the wings, bit a newly manicured fingernail.
"I begged Mrs. Gulick to make that dumb child of hers learn her part," she whispered wrathfully to her husband.
"Mrs. Gulick says it's your fault for not prompting loud enough," said Mr. Pottle.
"She did, did she?" Mrs. Pottle assumed what is known in ring circles as a fighting face.