The copies of the play chosen for production by the girls of the Central High Players Club had arrived, and Mr. Mann, who was to direct the production, called the members of the club together in the small hall which was just off Mr. Sharp's office.

"And thank goodness!" murmured Bobby Hargrew, "Gee Gee cannot break into this session. What do you suppose she has suggested?"

"Mercy! how do you expect us to guess the vagaries of the Carrington mind?" returned Lily Pendleton. "Something foolish, I'll be bound."

"Sh! Remember Mr. Mann is an instructor, too," said Nellie Agnew.

"That is all right, Doctress," giggled Lily. "Mr. Mann is a good fellow and will not peach."

"Tell us the awful truth, Bobby," drawled Jess. "What is Gee Gee's latest?"

"I understand," said the younger girl, "that she has been to Mr. Sharp and begged him to exercise his authority and make us act 'Pyramus and Thisbe' instead of 'The Rose Garden.'"

"Goodness! That old thing?" flung out Dora Lockwood.

"There is a burlesque on 'Pyramus and Thisbe' that we might give," chuckled Jess. "And it's all in doggerel. Let's!"

"Reckless ones! Would you spoil all our chances?" demanded Laura.

"Aw--well----"

"Remember, we are working for a worthy cause," Dorothy Lockwood mouthed, in imitation of the scorned Miss Carrington.

"You are right, Dory," Laura said soberly. "The Red Cross is worth suffering for."

"Right-o, my dear girl," declared Jess Morse with conviction. "Let us put aside Gee Gee and listen to what Mr. Mann has to say."

They had already talked over the characters of the play. None of them was beyond the capabilities of the girls of Central High. But what delighted some of them was that there were boys' parts--and girls would fill them!

Of course, Bobby Hargrew had been cast for one of the male parts. Bobby's father had always said she should have been a boy, and was wont to call her "my eldest son." She had assumed mannish ways--sometimes when the assumption was not particularly in good taste.

"But Short and Long," she growled in her very "basest" voice, "says I can't walk like a boy. Says anybody will know I'm a girl. I have a mind to get my hair cut short."

"Don't you dare, Clara Hargrew!" Laura commanded. "You'd be sorry afterward--and so would your father."

Bobby would never do anything to hurt "Father Tom," as she always called Mr. Hargrew, so her enthusiasm for this suggested prank subsided. But she growled:

"Anyway, it's a sailor suit I am going to wear, and I guess I can walk like a sailor, just as well as Short and Long."

"Better," declared Nellie soothingly. "And then, those wide-legged trousers sailors wear are quite modest."

At this all the girls laughed. Knickers in their gymnasium and field work had become second nature to them.

"But think of me," cried Jess, "in what Chet calls 'the soup to nuts!' Really the dress-suit of mankind is awfully silly, after all."

"And uncomfortable!" declared Dora.

"Attention, young ladies!" exclaimed Mr. Mann at that moment.

He was a rotund, beaming little man, with vast enthusiasm and the patience--so Nellie declared--of an angel.

"Not a full-sized angel," Bobby had denied seriously. "He is more the size of a cherub--one of those you see pictured leaning their elbows on clouds."

But, of course, neither of the girls made this comment within Mr. Mann's hearing.

The final decisions regarding the choice of parts were now made. The copies of the play were distributed. Mr. Mann even read aloud the first two acts, instructing and advising as he went along, so that the girls could gain some general idea of what was expected of them.

Before they were finished another point came up. There was a single character in the play that had not been accorded to any girl. It was not a speaking part; but it was an important part, for the other characters talked about it, and the silent character was supposed to appear on several occasions in "The Rose Garden."

"We need a tall, dark girl," said Mr. Mann. "One who walks particularly well and who win not be overlooked by the audience even when she merely crosses the stage. Who----?"

"Margit Salgo!" exclaimed Jess, who had every bit of the new play and its needs very close to her heart.

"Of course!" cried Laura and the Lockwood twins. "Margit is just the one," Mother Wit added.

"Oh!" said Mr. Mann at last. "You mean Margaret Carrington?"

"And she walks like a queen," sighed Lily Pendleton. "I wish I could learn to walk as she does."

"You know what Mrs. Case says," put in Bobby, in an undertone. "She says your feet, Lil, have been bound like a Chinese woman's of the old regime."

"Oh, you!"

"Margit went barefoot and lived in the open for years," said Laura.

"She was 'near to Nature's heart,'" laughed Jess. "Of course, she never tried to squeeze a number six foot into narrow twos."

"Never mind the size of her feet," said Mr. Mann good-naturedly. "If she can take the part, she will be just the one for it I remember that Miss Carrington's niece does have a queenly walk. And that is just what we need. But do you think we can get her?"

"She has never joined our club," said Jess thoughtfully.

"I am not sure that she has ever been invited," Laura said. "But she is always busy----"

"Gee Gee pretty near works her to death," growled Bobby. "I shouldn't wonder if Margit flew the coop some day."

"I am not sure, Miss Hargrew," said Mr. Mann, without a smile, "that I ought not to take you to task for your language. It really is inexcusable."

"Oh, dear me, Mr. Mann, don't you begin!" begged the culprit "If I am academic in school in my speech, let me be relieved out of sessions, I pray."

"But about Margit Salgo?" queried Laura. "Do you suppose she will be able to help us? I know she will be willing to, if we ask her."

"Gee Gee will object, you bet," growled Bobby under her breath.

That was not to be known, however, without asking. Laura said she would speak to Margaret about it, while Mr. Mann intimated that he would mention to Miss Carrington, the elder, that her niece was almost necessary to the success of the play.

Margit Salgo was not so straightly kept by Miss Carrington as she was engaged from morning to night in her studies. Having been utterly neglected as far as mental development went for several years, the half-gypsy girl was much behind others of her age at Central High.

Miss Grace Gee Carrington was pushing her protÉgÉ on as fast as possible. She was not yet in the classes of those, girls of her age whom she knew at Central High; but she was fast forging ahead and she took much pride in her own advancement.

Therefore she did not see Miss Carrington's sternness as Bobby, for instance, saw it. She found her aunt kind and considerate, if very firm. And the girl who had been half wild when Laura Belding first found her, as has been related in "The Girls of Central High on Track and Field," was settling into a very sedate and industrious young woman.

What girl, however, does not love to "dress up and act?" Margit Salgo was delighted when Laura explained their need to her.

"Just as sure as auntie will let me, I'll act," declared the dark beauty, flushing brilliantly and her black eyes aflame with interest. "You are a dear, Laura Belding, to think of me," and she hugged Mother Wit heartily.

Two days passed, and then came the first rehearsal. This, of course, could be little more than a reading of the parts before Mr. Mann, with the latter to advise them as to elocution and stage business. But Bobby declared she had been practicing walking like a boy and had succeeded in copying Short and Long almost exactly.

"Why me?" demanded Billy sharply, whose usual sweet temper seemed to have become dreadfully soured of late.

"Well, why not?" demanded Bobby. "Should I copy Pretty Sweet's strut?"

"Aw--him!" snorted Billy Long, turning away in vexation.

"Now, tell me," said the quick-minded Bobby Hargrew to Laura and Jess, with whom she chanced to be walking at the moment, "why it is that Billy has taken such a violent dislike to poor Purt of late? Why, he doesn't feel kindly enough toward him to send him another dead fish!"

They were going to the rehearsal, which was in the small hall of the school. Of course, there was a sight of bustle and talking. Every girl was greatly excited over her part. Some were "sure they couldn't do it," while there were those who "could not possibly remember cues."

"And I know I shall laugh just at the wrong place," said Lily Pendleton. "I always do."

"If you do," growled Bobby, "I'll do something to you that will make you feel far from laughing, I assure you."

"How savagely you talk!" sighed Nellie Agnew. "That boy's part you are to fill is already affecting you, Clara."

"'Sailor Bob' is going to be terrifically rough, I suppose," Jess said, laughing.

Mr. Mann called them to order, and the girls finally rustled into seats and prepared to go through "The Rose Garden" for the first time. Everybody knew her first speeches, and as Mr. Mann accentuated the cues and advised about the business the girls did very well during the first act.

But with the opening of the second act there was a halt. Here was where "the dark lady" should come in. Her first appearance marked a flourishing period by Jess, who strode about the stage as the hero of the piece.

"And Margit's not here!" cried Dora Lockwood. "Shouldn't she be, Mr. Mann? Really, her entrance gives me my cue, not Adrian's speech."

Adrian was Jess Morse. She nodded her head vigorously. "Of course, Margit ought to be here to rehearse with us."

"I am afraid," said Mr. Mann, with pursed lips, "that we shall have to give up the idea of having Miss Carrington--the younger--for the part."

"Oh, oh, oh!" chorused some of the girls. "Can't Margit play?"

"Isn't that just like Gee Gee?" demanded Bobby furiously.

"She wanted to, I am sure," Laura said. "It is not Margit's fault."

"Of course it isn't," snapped Jess. "That old--"

Fortunately she got no farther. The door opened at that instant and Miss Grace Gee Carrington entered. She was a very tall woman with grayish hair, eyeglasses, and a sallow complexion. Her dignity of carriage and stern manner were quite overpowering.

"Young ladies!" she said sharply, having come into the room and closed the door, "I have a word to say. I told Mr. Mann I would come here and explain why my niece cannot take part in any such foolish and inconsequential exhibition as this that you have determined on."

She glared around, and the girls' faces assumed various expressions of disturbance. Some, even, were frightened, for Miss Carrington had always reigned by power of fear.

"I would not allow Margaret to lower herself by appearing in such a play. I disapprove greatly of girls taking boys' parts. The object of the play itself is merely to amuse. There is nothing worth while or educational about it."

Again silence, and the girls only glanced fearfully at each other.

"I have a proposition to make to you," said the stern teacher. "It is not too late to change your plans. I have Mr. Sharp's permission to make the suggestion. He will agree to your changing the play and will be--er--satisfied, I am sure, if you accept my advice and put on the play which I first suggested. This is an old Greek play with real value to it We gave it once in my own college days, and it truly made a sensation. I should be quite willing for Margaret to appear in that play, and I should, in fact, be willing to give Mr. Mann the benefit of my own experience in rehearsing the piece."

Mr. Mann actually looked frightened. The stern instructor overpowered him exactly as she did many of the girls.

CHAPTER XII