[Illustration: BURGESS GAINED AN INTEREST AND AN OCCUPATION MORE ABSORBING THAN HE HAD FOUND FOR MANY YEARS.] "I understand," said Burgess more at a loss than a conversation had ever found him, "And what may I ask, is your part of the play?" "Mamie Conners is too nervous," the lady President explained "to come right out and act. She's 'A flourish of trumpets within an' a voice without an' a lady of the court an' a soldier an' a choir boy at the funeral.'" "Ah, Miss Conners," Burgess assured this timid but versatile Hyacinth, "that's only stage fright, all great actresses suffer from it at one time or another." * * * * * During the weeks that followed, order gradually gained sway in Denmark and Burgess gained an interest and an occupation more absorbing than he had found for many years. "My dear Margaret," he was wont to assure Miss Masters, when she remonstrated with him upon his generosity, "Why shouldn't I order supper to be sent in for them? and why shouldn't I ask them up to the house for rehearsals? There's the big music room going to waste and those lazy beggars of servants with nothing to do, and you saw yourself how it brightened up poor old Aunt Priscilla. She likes it--they like it--I like it--you ought to like it. And you certainly can't object to my having taken them _en masse_ to see Marsden in the play. By George! I'll drag him to theirs. We'll show him an Ophelia! that Mary Conners is a little genius." "She is wonderful," agreed Miss Masters. "The grace of her! The dignity! What she herself would call the culture-an'-refinement!" "All my discovery. That tyrant of a Rosie Rosenbaum had cast her as a quick change, general utility woman. And in the day-time you tell me she's a miserable little shop-girl in a Grand Street rookery!" "That is what she used to be. But I went to the shop a day or two ago to ask her to come up to my house to rehearse with the new Hamlet. I watched her for a few moments before she noticed me. She was Ophelia to the life. She conversed in blank verse. She walked about with that little queenly air you have taught her. She was delicious, adorable. At first she said that she could not rehearse that night, but I told her you wished it and she came like a lamb. I often wonder if I did a wise thing in introducing them to you. Your sort of culture-an'-refinement' may rather upset them when the play is over and we all settle back to the humdrum." "You did a great kindness to me," said he, "and the best stroke of missionary work you'll do in a dog's age. I'm going to work." "You are not," she laughed. "I am. Shamed into it by the Lady Hyacinths." "Then perhaps the balance will be maintained. If you turn them against labor they will have turned you toward it."