"You'll look the character nicely," said Annie consolingly. "You've really rather a classic sort of nose, and you'll have a big distaff and spindle, and be spinning as you talk." "That won't help me to remember my part, unless I can write it on a scrap of paper and hide it among the flax. I declare, it's not fair! Volumnia has far more to say than Tullus Attius or Sicinius. You ought to have something extra tagged on to your parts." "We've quite enough, thanks!" declared Deirdre and Annie hastily. "As for Gerda," continued Dulcie, "she's being let off too easily altogether. Her Senator's speech is only eight lines." "Well, it's my first term at Latin, remember," said Gerda. "Jessie Macpherson will have to swot like anything to get up 'Caius Marcus Coriolanus'. I'm glad I'm not picked for the show part, anyhow." "Jessie won't mind swotting if she has a chance to shine. There'd have been trouble if she'd had to play second fiddle." "No one would be rash enough to suggest that. She's not head of the school for nothing." "Look here! Is this play to be part of the Latin lesson or an extra? Shall we be excused our ordinary prep.?" "Not a line." "Oh, what a shame! Then it's giving us double lessons. I wish Miss Harding had left us to get up a concert by ourselves." Although the girls might grumble and make rather a fuss over learning their parts, they soon committed the little play to memory, and thanks to Miss Harding's efforts rehearsals went briskly. Jessie Macpherson, whose cleverness certainly justified her assumption of general superiority, rose to the occasion nobly, and tripped off her long speeches as if Latin were her mother tongue, to the envy and admiration of those who still halted and stumbled. "Jessie had got through her grammar before she came to the Dower House, though," said Irene Jordan, herself a beginner. "It gives her an enormous pull to have started early." "Boys' schools get up ever such grand Latin plays," remarked Rhoda Wilkins. "At Orton College, where my brothers go, they did the _Phormio_ of Terence. We went to see it, and it was splendid. It took fully two hours. Ours won't take one." "Well, one expects boys to be better at Latin." "Some girls' schools run them hard," said Phyllis Rowland. "I know girls who can beat their brothers." "Oh, yes, at the big High Schools, where you choose classics or modern languages, and stick to one side. At the Dower House we dabble in everything all round, maths., and science, and accomplishments thrown in as well. Well, it gives you the chance to see which you like best." The most serious question in connection with the performance was the arrangement of the costumes. Miss Harding and the elder girls pored over illustrated Roman histories and classical dictionaries, trying to get the exact style of the period.