[EPOCH MAKING]
The morning after the freshman play found the gymnasium looking somewhat forlorn. The portable stage had lost part of the discreet drapery that masked its front below the footlights, and now recklessly displayed its crazy supports to the public eye; the footlights themselves were a mass of blackened tallow in their battered tin sockets; the faded green canton-flannel curtains which had served as a forest background for the last act of Prince Otto, and been torn from half their rings at its end when Seraphina and the prince tried to make a simultaneous entry in response to applause, trailed limply from their remaining supports, and seemed to beg for the friendly shadows of the property-room to hide their rents and tatters. In the corners of the stage, the groups of branches which had simulated the primeval forest drooped their withered heads in mournful wise against their too evident props, and like the grey cambric rocks and tin-foil rivulet which occupied the centre of the scene, were hardly recognizable as parts of last night's fairy woodland.
Even less recognizable, but scarcely so forlorn, the actors in the performance soon began to drop in, at first one by one, and then in little groups of two or three. They came in fresh and smiling and full of misdirected zeal for the work of clearing up; most of the later arrivals came from the basket-ball field, and flung down their gayly-coloured golf-capes just where they would be most in the way; and all of them, as they went about pulling down the decorations, and piling borrowed properties into bewildering heaps for return to their owners, chattered incessantly of last night's great success.
The November sunlight fell in yellow, dusty shafts through the high windows above the running track, spilling its pale brightness on the cluttered floor and stage, and spread even into the alcove where the horizontal bars jostled the horse and the rowing-machines in ignominious confusion and with a general shamefaced air of being huddled out of the way. The position of the yellow rays indicated ten o'clock, and the busy workers, having accumulated rugs, curtains, costumes, bric-a-brac, a number of potted plants, and the fragments of a pasteboard fireplace, in heterogeneous piles on every side, were beginning to wonder if they could ever straighten them out again, when the arrival of three or four fresh recruits gave them an excuse for resting while they reported progress.
Their labours, indeed, spoke for themselves. Peggy Dillon, the class chairman, who headed the reinforcements, opened her round blue eyes aghast at the dusty chaos which greeted her, and found herself bereft of speech by the look of modest pride which beamed from all the faces before her; but one of her companions, a handsome girl with a certain air of authority about her, was equal to the occasion.
"Dear me, how enterprising you all are!" she exclaimed, coming forward with a comprehensive smile; "there is really a great deal accomplished already. (Don't look so utterly overcome, Peggy, if you can help it.) You must have worked like beavers to get all those curtains down."
The workers, hot, dirty, and dishevelled, beamed with redoubled brightness upon the speaker, and upon the havoc they had wrought, and tasted all the sweetness of being appreciated. Pauline Van Sandford was a tall girl who carried her head rather high, and spoke with a good-humoured imperiousness. Perhaps these things added weight to her remarks. With a very creditable show of gratification, she went on,
"And nearly all the properties in piles!" Here a gasp from Peggy, who had just discovered her pet cast in one of the said piles under a section of the stage-steps, warned her to hasten her climax; she worked up her remarks to quite an enthusiastic close, and then, apparently consumed with anxiety for the workers' fatigue, she fell upon the helpful band, and fairly swept them from the gymnasium upon a wave of appreciative solicitude.