That settled, they turned their attention to coffee and cake, and their conversation to the five-thousand-dollar investment and what they would do with it—as if, Peggy thought, it had been the least important part of the busy evening’s events!
VII
An Intermission
It was a good thing, Peggy thought, that she was going to the New York Dramatic Academy and not to a more conventional kind of school. Mr. Macaulay, the director of the Academy, approved of his students’ taking part in off-Broadway plays, and made certain concessions to those who were doing so, such as excusing them from school plays. While this eliminated the necessity of learning the lines of two plays at once, and also gave Peggy more free time than the other students, it did not excuse her from her regular school work.
She attended classes in History of the Theater, Elizabethan Playwrights, Restoration Drama, Acting for the Camera, Ballet and Modern Dance, and Make-up Techniques.
It was a full schedule all by itself.
But, of course, it wasn’t all by itself. Classes filled the day from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon, and rehearsals began at six in the evening at the Penthouse Theater and ran on to midnight. On Saturdays, rehearsals and scene painting and construction filled the day from nine to six. This grueling schedule left Peggy only three hours each day to study for her classes at the Academy and to learn her lines for Come Closer, and practically no time except Sundays for such things as hair washing, personal laundry, letter writing and all the other things that usually seem to take no time at all because they are spread through the week.
Sometimes she wondered how she would ever do it all. But other times she wondered how she could ever again enjoy a life that was less full, less active, less exciting. She was very busy, and very, very happy.
Now it was a few minutes past six on a Saturday evening, and she and Amy were carefully washing the paint from their hands and faces. Peggy leaned across the basin, very close to the mirror, for a minute inspection, found one last little spot of green on the lobe of her ear, and carefully removed it.
“I think I’m all clean,” she said. “How about you?”
“Just a few more spots,” Amy answered. “Then I’ll inspect you and you inspect me.”