“I declare, I never saw such a spectacle as I am in my life,” Gerry Ferrows protested, turning half way around to get a back view of herself in her bedroom mirror. “You look perfectly lovely, Winifred, and I would not be a bit surprised if you get the Shakespeare prize after all, even though Olive has the best class record for the year and I the highest mark for my essay. We are so close together in this contest that the least thing may change the balance. It is my private opinion that whoever gives the best Shakespeare recitation to-day will receive the prize.” And Gerry sighed and then laughed, as she stooped to adjust her doublet and hose. “Dear me, Winifred, why couldn’t I have been born a stately blonde beauty like you so that I might have appeared as lovely Ophelia instead of having to represent Rosalind on account of my short hair?”

Winifred also laughed, just the least bit complacently, happening at that moment to catch sight of her own fair reflection. She was dressed in a long clinging robe of some soft white material and her pale blonde hair, bound with a fillet of silver, hung loose about her neck. In her hand she held a sheet of paper with her speech written upon it, which she glanced at a little nervously every now and then.

“Dear me, Gerry, don’t talk of my winning the prize by my recitation,” Winifred groaned. “I have the most dreadful case of stage fright already, and to think that I have to make the first speech!” She glanced up at the clock on their mantel. “It is only a half hour now before we must go downstairs and I believe that there have never been so many guests at one of our commencements before. I suppose it is because the day is so beautiful that we can have our whole entertainment outdoors. I wish we had a front window, for I am sure I have heard at least a hundred automobiles drive up to the house. If we go to the ranch girls’ room we can see out into the yard and I can have a look at Olive. I am simply dying to find out what she looks like!”

Gerry shook her head positively. “Jean says that no one is to come near Olive; she even means to go downstairs with her herself and to slip around to the entrance to the stage in the pavilion, so that no one shall dare speak to her. So I suppose if the truth be known, Winifred, Olive is just about as badly scared as you are and a good deal more so, considering how dreadfully shy she is. But don’t fear that she will not look pretty. I heard Jessica Hunt say the other night that she never saw any one so exquisite in her life as Olive in her Shakespeare costume. And I feel rather proud because Olive chose Perdita in ‘The Winter’s Tale’ for her character because I asked her to. She had once made me think of a description of Perdita.”

Winifred flushed angrily and then began walking up and down the room. “See here, Gerry Ferrows, I do think it is just too hateful for you to have kept on encouraging Olive to try for this prize. It will look awfully queer to people if she accepts a prize from her own grandmother anyhow, and I do need it most dreadfully.” In her nervousness and temper Winifred was almost in tears, though not for worlds would she consciously have marred her lovely appearance.

A low whistle came from between Gerry’s red lips. “Please don’t leave me out of the race altogether, sweet Winifred,” she begged. “I may not have so great beauty as you and Olive to commend me, but remember:

Then Gerry, marching over with an exaggerated, swashbuckling stride toward Winifred, smote her on the shoulder with more friendliness than she had shown her in many weeks. “Come, Winifred, what is the use of our worrying now? I believe I need this prize money quite as much as you do, since my father has just made some unfortunate investments and may not be able to let me come back to old Primrose Hall to graduate next year. And of course we know this prize would mean our tuition. But we must take what comes with a good grace, for you and Olive and I have an equally fair chance with our speeches to-day. So if Olive wins we ought not to fuss, for I can perfectly well understand how she wants the glory of winning and not the prize itself. She told me that she had been working for this prize ever since she first came to Primrose Hall in order to show her beloved Jack Ralston how much she had appreciated the opportunities she had given her.”

In reply Winifred merely shrugged her shoulders scornfully, but at the same instant, a bell sounding out on the lawn and a great clapping of hands, she again fell to studying the paper in her hand. “Good gracious, there is someone’s speech just ending!” she exclaimed, “so our turns will come soon.”

And Gerry, even though she was sure of being letter perfect in Rosalind’s saucy reply to Orlando: “No, no, Orlando, men are April when they woo, December when they wed,” opened her “As You Like It” and began once more to read over her part.

So five, ten, fifteen minutes went by and then Jessica Hunt’s voice was heard outside in the hall: “Where are my Shakespeare heroines?” she demanded. “Gerry, Winifred, please put your long coats around you and come on downstairs now. The coast is clear and it is almost time for your speeches. I will tell Olive.”

Winifred had indeed been right: no commencement day at Primrose Hall had ever been so beautiful as this one and never before had one called forth so many guests.

Built as like as possible to an old Greek outdoor theatre, a stage had been erected at the edge of a grove of trees not many yards from the great house and a kind of covered arbor temporarily arranged so that the girls who took part in the commencement exercises might pass from the house to the stage without being seen by the audience. The stage had no curtain and only the sky for a canopy, a rarely blue sky with the white clouds that melt before the deeper warmth of June. On either side were piled great branches of trees freshly brought in from the woods, delicately green with the early leaves of spring, and the floor of the stage was strewn with wild-flowers, buttercups, violets and daisies.

In the yard facing the pretty impromptu theatre the audience was seated, perhaps two hundred persons, so that any girl making her first public appearance before it might reasonably be frightened. Perhaps it was the beauty of the day, perhaps the novelty of Miss Winthrop’s stage arrangements, for surely no audience had ever appeared more enthusiastic than hers, and as each girl had stepped forth on the stage, apparently entering from the heart of a woods on to a carpet of flowers, the applause and interest had increased.

The Shakespeare heroines were to be the closing feature of the programme. Therefore, in the front row facing the stage were half a dozen men and women whom Miss Winthrop had invited to act as judges, and a few feet from them in a chair next Miss Winthrop’s sat old Madame Van Mater, the owner of “The Towers” and the donor of the Shakespeare prize. Her appearance at the commencement had been a surprise to everybody, but whether she came because of her interest in her newly-found granddaughter or whether because of her affection for Miss Winthrop, no one had been told.

When Winifred Graham first came out upon the stage such a murmur of admiration ran through the audience that its echo reached to her, giving her just the confidence she had needed for the making of her speech. And truly her beauty justified the admiration, for she was wearing the costume that best suited her and was most effective against the natural background of evergreens and flowers. The sunshine falling between the leaves of the trees overhead touched her pale blonde hair to a deeper gold, making fairy shadow patterns on the pure white of her dress.

Without a trace of the nervousness that had haunted her upstairs, nor a moment’s faltering over her lines, Winifred recited Ophelia’s famous description of Hamlet, ending with the words, “O, woe is me, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see.” Then for just a moment she paused with a pretty, pathetic gesture and her gaze swept the faces of her judges before she vanished from the stage amid much clapping of hands. Three times Winifred was recalled by the audience and at each call Gerry’s heart sank lower and lower in her pretty high-top boots.

“There is no use my trying now,” she grumbled, “because Winifred has already won.” When a friend standing near whispered something in her ear she laughed in her usual good-humored fashion. “Oh, yes, I suppose I can recite better than Winifred, but what avails it me when I can’t look like the goddess of spring as she does at this moment there on the stage with her arms full of flowers.”

Gerry and two of her closest friends were under the enclosed arbor in the spot nearest the entrance to the stage, as her recitation came next, and a few feet away Olive, closely guarded by Jean, was also waiting.

Hurriedly Jessica Hunt rushed in, whispering something to Jean. Then she darted across to Gerry. “Winifred is coming off now for the last time; are you ready? Winifred looked perfectly lovely, but she did not speak distinctly enough. Remember it is difficult to hear out of doors.”

Then came Gerry’s cue. A little nearsighted without her glasses, she tripped over some branches, making a headlong rush on to the stage in her entrance, as though Rosalind, really trying to find her way through an unknown woods, had stumbled in the underbrush.

No one had ever been able to call Gerry Ferrows handsome, and yet in the character and costume of Rosalind she was certainly at her best. Perhaps the description that the heroine gives of herself in masquerade will best describe Gerry’s present appearance.

And truly if Gerry did feel any womanish fear during her recitation she did not in any way betray it, for at once the gayety of Rosalind, her wit and gallant courage, seemed to have fallen like a mantle upon Gerry. Twice her audience laughed aloud in the course of her recitation and once two of the judges nodded at each other, which had not happened during Winifred’s speech. Nevertheless, though Gerry came twice on to the stage again to receive her flowers and applause, she was certain that unless Olive made a much better showing than she had, Winifred would be the winner of their contest.

For some unexplainable reason there was a slight wait before the third girl, who was to close the competition, made her appearance. And this was unfortunate for Olive. In the first place, the large audience was growing a little bit tired and hungry, and in the second place, it gave them the opportunity to begin talking of Olive’s curious history, retailing to one another as much or as little as each one of them knew.

Olive’s costume was a gift from Ruth and Jack, sent from New York and shown to no one before the entertainment save Jessica Hunt and Miss Winthrop. No one will ever know how much pleasure the planning of it had given to Jack Ralston in the tiresome days at the hospital. Not that she and Ruth were Shakespeare scholars, only it had happened that years before Ruth had seen a famous actress, who soon afterwards retired from the stage, in this very character of Perdita in “The Winter’s Tale” and had never forgotten the details of her dress.

Quietly, when but few persons were looking, Olive at last skipped on to the stage. She was wearing a pale pink crepe dress that came down to her ankles, covered with an overdress of flowered tulle. Her long and curiously black hair was braided in the two familiar loose braids with a single pink flower at one side, and on her arm she carried a basket of spring flowers.

Had all her friends and acquaintances not been convinced from the first that Olive would be frightened to death before so many people? It was odd, therefore, that as she first came down toward the edge of the platform she smiled assurance at Miss Winthrop, who was trying her best not to appear too anxious or too interested in her favorite pupil.

Then, Olive, before beginning Perdita’s speech, started slowly to dance an old English folk dance such as the country people must have danced in rustic England long before even Shakespeare’s time. Dancing was an art with Olive, so that before she commenced her speech her audience was won.

Still not showing the least trace of fright or nervousness, when her dance was concluded, Olive stepped forward again to the center of the open-air stage:

She looked from one face to the other in the rows of people watching her as though addressing Perdita’s pretty speech to them.

Then Miss Winthrop lost her color and old Madame Van Mater stiffened and her eyes flashed. “Foolish girl, she has forgotten her part and is going to make a spectacle of herself and me!” she whispered in her friend’s ear. “I wish I had never come.”

And apparently Olive had forgotten her lines or else grown suddenly ill, for she continued standing perfectly still and speechless for a period of one, two minutes, though surely it seemed like ten, while waves of color swept over her face, turning it crimson and then leaving it pale. “Oh, I cannot believe it,” she whispered softly to herself, never taking her eyes from a central place in the audience, as though on this exquisite May morning she had suddenly seen a ghost.

What secret message traveled across the heads of the audience to the girl on the stage, no one knows, but Olive must have caught it, for she smiled again and dipping her hand in her basket of wild-flowers appeared to present them to various characters, who in Shakespeare’s play stand grouped around the figure of Perdita as she makes this speech:

As Olive spoke slowly she drew her flowers from her basket, dropping them to the ground and moving gradually backwards toward the entrance to the stage. Then, when she had recited the last line of her speech, she made a quick bow and before her audience realized that her speech was actually over, had disappeared.

Whether the applause that followed after her equalled Winifred’s and Gerry’s she did not know and at the moment did not care. For Jean was waiting only a few yards away and Olive rushed to her at once.

“Oh, Jean dear,” she said half laughing and half crying, “I didn’t see? It can’t be true! Oh, why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Because we did not want you to be too excited,” Jean answered, trying to speak calmly, “but oh, Olive, please hurry, for Jack wishes you to come to her at once.”