“Oh, the music for our play is too lovely!” exclaimed Lilian, entering Lakeview Suite and starting to put away her violin.

Isabel who was visiting the girls, looked up inquiringly.

“It’s the Mendelssohn music, you know, written for the Midsummer Night’s Dream. I wish I were playing in the orchestra. I’ve been helping practice.”

“Couldn’t you play part of the time with them?”

“Not very well in costume. I might do it for a while, though. I don’t come on until the third act, and the second scene at that,—Enter Titania, with her train.”

“Fine, Lilian,” said Isabel, applauding. “Are you glad you decided on Midsummer Night’s Dream?”

“Yes, indeed; it is going to be too pretty outdoors, the fairies and everything, and the costumes are perfectly lovely. Miss Randolph bought new ones, because they have never given this before, and she is gradually getting a good collection of costumes. Patty and the other English teachers are just crazy about it.”

“I should think that they would be really crazy by the time all the practicing and drilling are over. Don’t you think that Patty looks thin, Cathalina?”

“Yes, Isabel, and it is no wonder. I heard that she is going to France this summer, but I have not said a word to her about it. She will tell us if she is.”

“Why, Lilian,” said Hilary, who was reading the play, “you are all wrong about not coming in until the third act, second scene. It is the second act, scene one.”

Lilian looked over Hilary’s shoulder at the text. “Sure enough. I forgot my converse with Oberon. That is what Mrs. Norris is scolding us for, just learning our parts, without having the whole play in mind, but we have so many other things to do. It is a good thing that the senior examinations are all over so early. I don’t know what I would do without senior week. I wish Mother and Father could come for Commencement week. They would love seeing the play and all, at least Mother would.”

“Can’t they come?”

“No, not without risking not being in New York when the boys leave. Dick is expected to be sent over at any time now.”

“Aunt Hilary is coming,” said Hilary, “but Father and Mother will not this time. Aunt Hilary was the one who wanted me to come to Greycliff.”

“Yes,” said Cathalina, “Hilary and I both owe our Greycliff days to the suggestions of our aunts.”

“What part have you, Hilary?” asked Isabel.

“I’m Theseus, duke of Athens, aha! And my fair Hippolyta is Pauline, because, as she says, they thought she was cast for an Amazon. Hippolyta is queen of the Amazons, you know.”

“I read the play once,” said Isabel, with a laugh, “but I’ll have to read it up before the play is given or I won’t enjoy it so much. Let me see,—who’s Hermia?”

“Evelyn, because she is little and dark, and Lysander is Helen. Won’t it be great?—Lysander and Hermia making love in that soft southern accent?”

“Yes, and Evelyn using her eyes as Hermia. Evelyn couldn’t help it if she tried.”

“There is another pair of lovers—?”

“Yes, Helena, you know, who is terribly in love with Demetrius, and he wants Hermia, till the fairies fix that all up.”

“Modern interpretation of Shakespeare by Hilary Lancaster,” murmured Cathalina.

“Wait till you hear me say with dramatic effect as Theseus,—‘but earthlier happy is the rose distill’d, than that which withering on the virgin thorn, grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.’”

“Is that where we get ‘single blessedness’?”

“It is. You have heard of the person, haven’t you, that didn’t like Hamlet very well when she heard it played, ‘because it was so full of quotations’?”

“Nor original enough, I suppose,” laughed Isabel.

“Oh, I must tell you girls something funny,” said Cathalina. “Yesterday I was in here alone, and practicing my lines. I am the first Fairy, and was saying the lines instead of singing them. I had just broken out with ‘You spotted snakes with double tongue,’—when I saw that new academy freshman, who has only been here this spring, standing in the door and looking at me with eyes as big as saucers. Whether she had knocked or not I don’t know. I stopped, laughing, but I haven’t the least idea that she understood at all. She gave me a message from Miss Randolph as quickly as she could, and hurried off without letting me explain.”

“She probably thought that you were in the habit of addressing your room-mates in that happy way,” said Isabel.

“I have wondered several times what she did think, and laughed right out in the middle of the night last night and wakened Betty. You thought I had lost my mind, didn’t you Betty?”

“Yes; but I was glad that you wakened me, for I was having a horrible dream about Captain Holley’s coming back for me, and it was nice to be wakened by somebody’s laughing.” Betty’s nerves were not what they might be since her last experience, but the girls purposely made light of it all.

At this moment, Diane Percy and Eloise arrived to join the company, and Virginia peeped in to see if Isabel were there. “Come on in just a minute, Virgie,” called Isabel. “The girls are telling about the play. Have you a part, Diane?”

“Yes, I’m Demetrius, and Edith Lane is Helena, because she is the tallest fair girl we have and we have to have a contrast between her and Evelyn.”

“What are you, Eloise?”

“Oberon. Neither Lilian or I are really small enough for fairies, but in the costumes we look smaller. I hope the play will go all right. The girls are all really working now that the time is so near. They are rehearsing some of the scenes now out on the campus.”

“Wouldn’t it be awful if it rained and we had to give it indoors?”

“If it rains one day, they will whisk around the program and put the Glee Club concert on or something.”

“Just think, girls, only two more weeks now for us at Greycliff, and then we go away forever!” This was Cathalina. “I came with tears, and I shall probably leave in tears or something like it!”

“I certainly shall shed tears if we don’t win that debate,” said Isabel.

“You will,” said Cathalina. “That comes off next week, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, on our regular night, next Friday night. Come on, Virgie. Even thinking of it is enough to start me thinking of the arguments.”

Isabel and Virgie departed, while Diane took exception to Cathalina’s statement that they had two weeks still as seniors. “This is Saturday, Cathalina, and you know that the exercises of Commencement week are cut short this year. I don’t imagine that we shall have half the company we usually do, either. The Inter-Society Debate will be on Friday night; the play a week from today; Sunday, the baccalaureate sermon in the Chapel; Monday, our honors presented, and class day exercises in the afternoon, Glee Club concert in the evening; Tuesday, diplomas.”

“When are we going to have our society reception and our senior society diplomas?” asked Betty.

“When are we? I had forgotten that. Hilary, you are president, what about it?”

“I was counting on the usual time, but why didn’t I think of it? Well, it can be posted. Why wouldn’t it do to go right from the class day exercises to the society hall. It will be appropriate then. We have asked Patty to make a little speech and present the diplomas; then we’ll serve lemonade and cake and ice cream. The juniors will see to it while we are having our other exercises. They are rather short this year.”

“I think that will be a good idea, Hilary,” said Eloise. “The class day exercises will probably take only an hour and a half. We could have the society reception from four to six.”

“So we could. We’d better arrange it that way. I’ll call a meeting of the executive committee Monday.”

On Monday, as it happened, another and more important matter came up. As Cathalina sat calmly eating her cereal breakfast, a note was passed to her. “Mercy me!” she exclaimed as she read. “Listen to this, girls.”

Betty, Hilary and Lilian, who sat nearest, looked up with interest.

“‘Dear Cathalina: Edith Lane has measles! You will have to be Helena. Please let me see you right after breakfast.—P. Norris.’ Now isn’t that like Patty? Takes it for granted that I will do it because it is to be done. Lilian, you are as tall as I am, you do it.”

“No, I’m not quite as tall, but I don’t think it makes so much difference for that reason as that I already have a part and have learned my lines.”

“So have I.” Cathalina’s lips were curling in amusement, however, as she reflected on her prominent part as first fairy. “How can she expect me to learn a part in a week?”

“We haven’t any lessons,—that is one thing,” suggested Hilary. “You can do it, Cathalina. You have heard the play several times.”

“Yes, I am familiar with the play,” said Cathalina, “but Helena has a good deal to say, if I remember. I know four lines of hers:

“Think what a start you have,” said Betty, her dimples beginning to play.

“I’ll think about it,” said Cathalina, “but it shan’t spoil my breakfast. Please pass me the cream, Betty. Mine has all disappeared somewhere, and I like to see a little on my oatmeal.”

After breakfast Cathalina, who had hoped to escape a prominent part, since she was not in the Dramatic Club, hunted up Mrs. Norris and finally consented to do her best with the part of Helena.

“There are some other girls, Cathalina, who are anxious to have such a part, but I do not feel that any one of them will do as well as you will. You have seen the play several times in New York and know how the different characters are represented and I don’t want this part overdone. Edith looked the part very well, but she says the lines in an absolutely uninteresting way, and I don’t know but it is just as well that she has the measles, poor child. By the way, all of you must keep away from the hospital. We can’t have an epidemic of measles starting here just before time to start home.”

“That would be a calamity,” assented the smiling Cathalina. “All right, Mrs. Norris, I’ll try it. Shall I come to the practices and read the lines I do not know?”

“Yes. Would you like to go over the lines, as you learn them, with me?”

“I imagine that I’d better. I will get the other girls to hear me, too.”

“It is work for Cathalina this week,” said that young lady, as she entered the suite after the conference with Patricia Norris.

“Good girl,” said Hilary, with approbation. “Cathalina has the right kind of class spirit. She is right there when there is anything to be done.”

“I do hate to do this, though, Hilary.”

“All the more credit to you, then, for doing it. Here are your first lines,” and Hilary, who had begun to study over again her own part, turned the pages to Helena’s first speech. “Here you are, addressing Evelyn as Hermia:

“I do like her lines, the words are so musical,—‘your tongue’s sweet air more tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear’.”

“Oh, you will like it when you get at it. You ought to have heard Dorothy Appleton rave about being Bottom, but she thinks it great fun now. Did you see her at the last practice? She said she was not sure which string she was pulling in the donkey’s head. She might make his ears wiggle when his eyes ought to blink, but we told her that we didn’t think it mattered.”

Greycliff days were taking wing. The week fairly flew till its important close. On Friday night, the Whittiers and Emersons gathered in the chapel for the Inter-Society Debate. Isabel, with pink cheeks and cold hands, had bid her friends goodbye with the remark that she was marching to her doom, but Virginia was “as calm as an oyster,” to quote Isabel.

“Do you think that Isabel was nervous enough to hurt?” asked Cathalina, who was a little worried. “You know how sure she was over the canoe race.”

“That was different,” replied Juliet, who sat next to Cathalina. “She has to remember a speech this time, and while Isabel is such a fine debater, I think she dreads this occasion. It is more important to the girls.”

But if Isabel was nervous beforehand, when she appeared on the stage platform she was perfectly at ease and never had debated with more brilliance. Virginia, too, never appeared to better advantage, and Lilian thought as she looked at the fine-looking girl on the platform, so earnest, so well prepared, of what Greycliff had meant to Virgie since that day when she had gone in to comfort the discouraged girl from the Dakota ranch. It was scarcely possible to believe that Virginia was the same girl, nor was she quite. A bigger outlook, a more unselfish ambition and a sweeter poise was hers.

The judges were not out long, and the decision was unanimous for the Whittier team. The annual banner, which for another year would grace the Whittier hall, was presented by one of the trustees, and accepted by Isabel, representing the team.

What sort of a day would Saturday be? This was the most important consideration to which the seniors wakened that morning. Everything was ready for the presentation of the play outdoors, and the girls had gone to sleep on Friday night saying over their lines. There had been a thunderstorm on Friday afternoon, but it had cleared for the evening, and the stars came out. The evening paper had promised a good day, but as Isabel said, you never can tell. The last practice had not gone off very well. That was on Friday morning, in costume. But girls forgot their speeches, girls who had never done that before, several came on at the wrong moment, forgetting their cues, and Patty was nearly distracted.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Norris, remember that Miss Perin was not here to help you manage behind the scenes. Nobody will go on at the wrong time tonight.” Lilian was trying to comfort her teacher as they happened to meet on the way to the scene of action.

“Oh, thank you, Lilian. I am not worried now. We have everything fixed better now, all the stage property at hand and some one in charge. Miss Perin will attend to sending the folks on, if they forget, and I have the text, as prompter.”

“Behind the scenes,” in the lovely spot chosen, consisted of a thick clump of evergreens behind which a green curtain had been stretched to screen the players. Through arching branches was the stage entrance. The background was the woods behind Greycliff Hall and its adjacent buildings. An even stretch of ground on the level of Greycliff Hall made a woodland spot easy of access, yet with the wildest of surroundings. Part of the elevation, finally resulting in what was called “high hill,” ascended gradually from level ground, and there it was that the girls brought cushions and newspapers and sat, on the slope, to view the play. There were a few chairs for the faculty, ladies, alumnae and guests. The orchestra sat at one side of the “stage,” not to obstruct the view of the players, and were next to the evergreens before mentioned. Aunt Hilary had arrived and occupied a place of honor next to Miss Randolph. Girls in costume were coming up the path from Greycliff Hall, the orchestra were tuning instruments, and the whole place was taking on a festival appearance. Prettiest of all were the fairies, and most ridiculous were the costumes of those taking the parts of Bottom and the rest of the Pyramus and Thisbe players.

“I’ll not forget, Mrs. Norris,” declared Cathalina, “but I shall draw a long breath when my part is over. However, I have had lots of fun this week. I hate to think that all this is so nearly over.”

“‘Lots’?”

“A great deal,” corrected Cathalina. “But sometimes I rather like our more blunt way of speaking.”

“If my girls will remember their parts tonight and not rant, I shall be happy.”

But often the simple acting of amateurs is more attractive than that of any but the best professionals. The cast of Greycliff’s Midsummer Night’s Dream could have no fault to find with the appreciation of their audience. That delightful atmosphere established itself which means players who are enjoying their work and an audience entirely held and entertained. Long would they remember the pretty scene.

“How did you like it, Aunt Hilary?” asked an excited Hilary, as she took her aunt’s arm and led her back to the Hall. The rest of the suite-mates followed, all interested in the one relative which their company boasted.

“I thoroughly enjoyed every moment, Hilary, and I think that all the girls did so well. Of course I was more interested in you, and in the girls that I know and have heard so much about during these years.”

“You must come to our suite now. We are going to make some lemonade to refresh you. The play did not take as long as I feared.”

“They cut some of the speeches, you know,” said Cathalina. “I was surely glad to have mine cut, and Patty was kind.”

“Cathalina had to learn her part in one week, Aunt Hilary. One of the girls who was to have the part came down with measles. Imagine it,—in your senior year and just at Commencement! So Cathalina was asked to do it.”

“I thought that I should hate it, but I rather enjoyed it, after all.”

“What was that perfectly heartless remark of Patty’s, Cathalina?”

“Oh, she did not mean it, but Edith had not been doing very well with her part. No wonder, if she was coming down with measles. I remember when I had them.”

“Have another lady-finger, Aunt Hilary. The Glee Club concert is our last performance at Greycliff. One by one our duties lessen. Did you like the music tonight?”

“It was beautiful. I had no idea that you would have so excellent an orchestra.”

“It was short two good players in Lilian and Eloise tonight, but it is really very well trained.”

“I am very fond of that music anyway, and out under the trees and stars it sounded particularly sweet. Goodnight, girls, I am glad that I am to have some more of Greycliff’s entertainment.”