The next morning Bret called her to the window to see how her namesake laughed with all her leaves in the early light. The two trees seemed to laugh together. “It’s their honeymoon,” he said. When he left the house old Gottlieb was shaking his head over the spectacle. Bret triumphantly cuffed him on the shoulder. “You see! I told you it would be all right.”
“Vait once,” said Gottlieb.
A few days before this Dorothy had called on Sheila to say that the church was getting up an open-air festival, a farewell to the congregation about to disperse for the summer. They wanted to borrow the Winfield lawn.
Sheila consented freely. Also, they wanted to give a kind of masque. Masques were coming back into fashion and Vickery had consented to toss off a little fantasy, mainly about children and fairies, with one or two grown-ups to hold them together.
Sheila thought it an excellent idea.
Also, they wanted Sheila to play the principal part, the mother of the children.
Sheila declined with the greatest cordiality.
Dorothy pleaded. Sheila was adamant. She would work her head off and direct the rehearsals, she said, but she was a reformed actress who would not backslide even for the church.
Other members of the committee and even the old parson begged Sheila to recant, but she beamed and refused. Rehearsals began with Dorothy as the mother and Jim’s sister Mayme as the fairy queen. Sheila’s children and Dorothy’s and a mob of others made up the rest of the cast, human and elfin.