“A funny way to begin,” thought Peggy, sighing. She had expected a line reading, even some work on stage. “And Chuck hardly said how-do-you-do, and I don’t know half the people here.” She glanced around, guessing that the young boys must be Michael Miller’s friends, and that older man by the other wall his father, Howard Miller. He noticed Peggy looking at him and smiled.
“Well,” Peggy decided, acknowledging him with a sigh, “if a man his age thinks nothing of working like this until all hours of the night, I guess I can do it too!” She worked on with renewed energy. By the time all the flats were finished, it was after midnight.
“Rehearsal promptly at nine o’clock in the morning,” Chuck announced crisply as they cleaned up and prepared to go home.
“Heavens to Betsy!” Peggy thought wearily as she lay in her bed, her back aching, muscles jumping from the unaccustomed effort. “Now I know why everyone was so quiet. They’d been at it all day—and I feel like this after only a few hours!” Her head spun dizzily as she closed her eyes. “Well, I’m part of a company,” she mused dreamily, “and that’s what counts. Even if I don’t like the parts I’m given—even if I have to do other things than act.” Plays and parts and costumes danced before her like a mirage. “I guess this is summer stock, all right!” she thought as she fell asleep.
II
A Serious Complication
“Not quite so serious, Peggy.” Chuck Crosby pulled on a lock of his straight, black hair as he listened to her read. “If you don’t have a slight tongue-in-cheek attitude, it’s not going to be funny. She is an earnest young girl, but it’s got to be exaggerated in a comic way.”
Peggy tried again. “Dad, I’m disappointed in you,” she read. “The world’s on fire and you’re occupied with a cigarette lighter!”
“Thank you,” Howard Miller answered dryly. He was reading the part of Peggy’s father in their opening show, Dear Ruth.
The cast was having its first line rehearsal on the sunny patio of the annex. Peggy had awakened excitedly with the expectation of working on stage, only to find that the company would be at the annex all day. She had wondered, in a resigned way, if she would ever see the stage at all. But now, as they progressed to the second scene of Act One, her disappointment was forgotten. She was concentrating on her part of Miriam, “Dear Ruth’s” younger sister.
“We can use you,” Peggy read on, addressing her father. “We can use anybody we can get!” She read the last line in a hopeless, adolescent fashion, timing it carefully, and the cast spontaneously laughed.