"Why, there you are, turning as red as a boiled lobster! Miss Birks says shyness is mostly morbid self-consciousness, and isn't anything to be proud of. Why don't you try to get out of it? It looks right-down silly to colour up like that over simply nothing at all. I'd be ashamed of it!" said Dulcie, who could be severe on other people's faults, though she demanded charity for her own. "Gerda's copying eighteenth-century heroines!" mocked Deirdre. "They always tried to outvie the rose. Didn't Herrick write a sonnet to his Julia's blushes? And I'm sure I remember reading somewhere: 'O, sweet and fair, Beyond compare, Are Daphne's cheeks. And Daphne's blushing cheeks, I swear!' Go it, Gerda! Can you possibly get a little redder if you try? If you outvie the rose, there's still the peony left!" Gerda took her room-mates' teasing, as she took everything else at the Dower House, with little or no remonstrance. It would have pleased the girls much better if they could have raised a spark out of her. Her queer, self-contained reserve was not at all to their taste, and they awarded the palm of popularity to Betty Scott, whose high spirits, perpetual jokes, and amusing tongue made her the public entertainer of the Form. "I wish Betty were acting," sighed Dulcie. "She's always the life and soul of a play. It was very stupid of her mother not to want her to learn Latin." "I'm afraid Gerda'll be a perfect stick as Ancus Vinitius," whispered Deirdre. "An absolute dummy," agreed her chum. But they underestimated Gerda's talents. Her part was a small one, yet she rendered it excellently. She walked, acted, and spoke with a calm dignity well in keeping with the character she represented. Everybody agreed that she made a most reverend and stately senator. "I ought to look old, though," she maintained. "It's absurd for us all to look so youthful." "Powder your hair," suggested Irene. "Not enough. I think I can do better than that." Rather to the girls' amusement, Gerda seemed more than ordinarily anxious about her costume. "She couldn't make more fuss if she was taking Coriolanus himself!" laughed Dulcie. "The Senator might be the chief part." Gerda had notions of her own, which she proceeded to carry out. She went to Jessie Macpherson and borrowed the white wig, and with the help of some more sheep's wool contrived a beard to match. On the afternoon of the performance she not only donned these, but blackened her eyebrows and painted her face with a series of wrinkles and crows'-feet. "Why, it's splendid!" exclaimed the girls. "You look seventy at the very least. Just the sort of venerable old city father you're meant for." "You'd hardly know me, would you?" enquired Gerda casually. "Nobody would know you. I don't believe even Miss Birks will recognize you. It's the best make-up of anybody's. Jessie'll be proud to see her wig used after all. She'll almost wish she'd worn it herself."