The play was to be given on Saturday evening. On Friday evening a
full-dress rehearsal was called. Hermia's costume was finished and was
spread, in all its ravishing beauty, across the guest-room bed. On the
floor from beneath it peeped the slippers which had been made to order.
"It'll make all the others look cheap," declared Isobel, thrilling at
the pretty sight.
Mrs. Westley looked troubled. Certain doubts had been disturbing her
ever since that first moment of enthusiasm when she had yielded to
Isobel's coaxing. Isobel had said that the other girls were making their
own costumes--she knew that the faculty disliked any extravagance or
great expenditures of money in any of the school affairs--might it not
have been better to have helped Isobel fashion something simple and
pretty at home? Then when she watched Isobel's flushed, happy face,
radiantly pretty, she smothered her doubt.
"Pride goeth before a fall, daughter mine. Take care that your costume
doesn't make you forget your part," she laughed. After all, Isobel was
so pretty that she would outshine the others, anyway--let her costume be
ever so dowdy!
Gyp, Jerry, Tibby, even Graham, superintended Isobel's preparations for
the dress rehearsal. Gyp sat back on her heels and declared that Hermia
was "good enough to eat." Jerry thought so, too, though she had not the
courage to say so. Graham straddled the footboard of the bed and passed
scathing remarks concerning girls' "duds," but his eyes were proudly
admiring and in his pocket he treasured a ticket for the first row that
he had bought from another fellow at an advanced price. Isobel ready,
they all squeezed merrily into the automobile, taking care not to crush
the rose-pink finery, and whirled off to Highacres.
Isobel, who loved dramatic situations in real life quite as well as in
make-believe, planned to conceal her radiance until her first appearance
on the stage, when she would startle them all, and especially Lysander,
with her dazzling loveliness. She stood in a shadow of the wings with
her coat wrapped about her. Except for Jerry, waiting to do her humble
part, she was alone. She listened to the ceaseless chatter in the
dressing-room with a happy smile. She heard Mr. Oliver, the coach,
giving sharp orders. There was some trouble with the curtain. She took a
quick step forward to see what it was; the high heel of her satin
slipper caught in a coil of rope from the staging and she fell forward
to her knees. With the one thought to save the satin gown, she jerked
her body quickly backward.
"Oh, Isobel, are you hurt?" Jerry was at her side in a moment.
"N-no, only----" Isobel managed to get to her feet, but she leaned
dizzily against the scene propping. "Whoever left that old rope here!
They ought to be reported!" She glared angrily at poor Jerry as though
the fault must be hers. "I've--I've ruined my dress," she sobbed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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