chapter one. The next thing was to get Her Highness to notice me. The

first night, as she swept by me on her way to her car, she inquired for the girl I’d ousted, and said it was refreshing to find an understudy who didn’t need breaking in. After that she never looked at me for four days except in the scenes, and then with a vacant sort of a stare and a stage smile. But the next night she turned giddy in the first act, and I managed to improvise a parlor story that fitted well enough into the scene while she snuffed smelling-salts and pulled herself together, so that the audience never guessed that anything was wrong. She looked awfully angry--at herself or me, I couldn’t tell which. But the manager patted me on the back, and perhaps because he told her to she sent for me to come to her in the long intermission. And I went, of course, and she asked me all about myself, and she liked my answers. So I plunged right in. The manager spent the night finding my play for her, and she spent the morning reading it and the afternoon talking to me about it, and the next day they began rehearsals--with the walking lady back in her part. I explained about her, and Miss Dwight thought it was a lovely story. She’s got a real Harding sense of humor; and she’s coming up here before long to see the place. That’s all.” Madeline leaned forward to reach for the muffin plate, and perceiving it to be empty hastily leaned back again.

Mary summoned Nora. “More muffins, please,” she ordered, “and don’t look so reproachful, Nora, please, over our appetites. Miss Madeline has been too busy lately proving that she’s a genius to take time to eat. Now she’s making up for it.”

“Oh, and is that what’s to pay?” said Nora, smiling comprehensively at the B. C. A.’s. “Provin’ anything is hard worrk. I could never prove me sums at school. That’s because they was generally wrong. It’s awful hard to prove what ain’t so, ain’t it now, Miss Madeline?” And Nora departed amiably for more muffins, ignoring the bursts of laughter that followed her. Nora had long since ceased to attach any significance to the laughter of the Harding girls. They laughed just as other people breathed. It was as unaccountable as the enormous number of muffins they consumed.

They were still laughing when Nora came back with Mary’s order. They sent her off again for hot tea, and they drank Madeline’s health in it, and Miss Dwight’s, and the health of the Walking Lady who had helped Madeline to play out her trump card. They congratulated Madeline riotously, they made wonderful plans for Miss Dwight’s visit to Harding, and others for seeing the first night of the play.

“We are at last justified in the eyes of the wide, wide world,” declaimed Mary pompously. “We’ve been called the cleverest crowd in college, and now we’ve shown ’em. A well-kept husband like mine and a well-kept tea-room like Betty’s are nice little features, but a play for Agatha Dwight is the real thing. And the moral of that is: Look out for a genius, and the grand-stand play will look out for itself.”

“And the moral of that,” said little Helen Chase Adams primly, “is that it’s time for faculty wives to dress for dinner.”

“Also campus faculty,” added Rachel hastily, and the most exciting B. C. A. tea-drinking of the season reluctantly dispersed.