Looking from face to face, Peggy suddenly laughed. “You look like a nestful of baby birds waiting to be fed!”
Then she told her friends the whole story of her trip, starting, of course, with the main fact that she had been accepted at Mr. Macaulay’s famous New York Dramatic Academy. Describing him, she acted him out for them, and soon had the girls in fits of laughter. Then she went on to tell about May Berriman, the room she would live in, the quaint old-fashioned neighborhood around Gramercy Park, the private park and all the rest. When she had finished, she said to Jean, “Doesn’t it make you want to change your mind? I do wish you’d come, too. It’s going to be wonderful, but with you there, it would be absolutely perfect!”
Jean shook her head ruefully. “I must admit it sounds tempting,” she said, “but I stand on what I told you before about what I want to do. I don’t think I’m an actress at all, and if I tried to be one, I’d probably only fail. And that wouldn’t make me happy at all. If I do what I plan to, though, I’ll probably succeed, and that way I’ll have a happy life.”
Peggy nodded her agreement. “I guess I was only testing you, in a way,” she admitted, “just to see if you really meant it. Now that I know you do, I’m sure that you’re absolutely right.”
Then she told her friend about the discussion she had had with May Berriman about Mr. Macaulay, and what the older woman had told Peggy about his great ability as a teacher and his lack of ability as an actor.
“She said, too, that the ability to recognize talent and to develop it is a lot rarer than the talent itself. And all the time she was talking, I was thinking about you and our last talk together.”
“Well, that makes me feel a lot better,” Jean admitted. “It’s good to know that there are other people—real professionals—who think about things the same way I do. Thanks for telling me.”
Then the talk turned to other things besides the theater: clothes, boys, the coming school year at Rockport Community College, for which Peggy would not be there—all the hundreds of things that girls talk about. Before Peggy realized it, it was ten-thirty, and she was beginning to yawn.
“It’s not the company,” she said, “it’s the hour. Not exactly original, but perfectly true. I’m afraid I’d better be getting home.”
The others agreed that it was their bedtime too, and they trooped out to the bicycle rack to say their good nights. Peggy and Jean rode side by side slowly down the leafy street, feeling the first slight chill that announced the end of summer was at hand.