So far as Joy was concerned nothing had been done to death. She
would quite willingly have been the humblest chorus-girl in
"Pinafore," if Clarence had willed to have that much-done classic.
But he seemed determined to have her play a large part in whatever
it was, and to have whatever it was _Iolanthe_. He wanted to be
_Strephon_, it seemed; in fact, he had been. And he wanted Joy
for the _Phyllis_ or _Iolanthe_.
Joy had a faint feeling that Phyllis Harrington ought to have the
part with her own name, but Clarence explained that names had
nothing whatever to do with it unless you were a movie star, when
you used your first name in order to make the public more interested
in your personality.
"We will give Gail the part you don't want," he told her, "as a
punishment for not letting you cook your eight-course dinner
tonight. By the way, we must time ourselves to get back and eat it.
I wonder whether Gail can cook. On second thoughts, why not stay out
till it's over?"
"The play!" said Joy imperatively.
"Well," he said, yielding, "would you rather be a fairy princess or
a shepherdess from Arcady? I'd prefer to have you the shepherdess,
for personal reasons. I wish to be the shepherd."
"Whatever you say," said Joy absently. "It's getting colder. Hadn't
we better walk a little?"
"Very well," said Clarence. "We can argue as we walk."
The problem of making sixteen young women willing to be a chorus and
of finding sixteen or twenty young men to be anything, took them
quite a while to discuss. They walked on as they talked, until it
began to get darker.
"By the way, have you any idea where we are?" inquired Clarence,
stopping short to look about him. "New England woods are not my
native habitat."
"Nor mine," said Joy, startled. "I think we ought to go back to the
high road."
"If there's any left to go back to," suggested Clarence. "We've been
on one way-path after another so long that I don't think I could
find it again."
They turned around, and continued to follow way-paths back. Clarence
had no pocket compass, such as people who get lost ought to possess.
And it was getting relentlessly darker and darker. Joy had never
been lost before, and she was surprised to find the feeling of panic
that possessed her when she grasped the fact that neither of them
knew where they were. Finally they gained a clear space where there
was a tolerably traveled-looking road.
"If we wait here somebody may come along," said Clarence. "Jove, I'm
hungry!"
"So am I," said Joy.
But there wasn't anything to do about _that_. Finally Joy
remembered that she had some chocolate in her little handbag, and
they divided it and ate it. After that life was a little brighter.
"Do you suppose we'll have to stay here all night?" demanded Joy.
"We'll freeze to death if we do."
"No, I don't," said Clarence. "But, Joy dear, if we do----"
The mockery was all out of his voice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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