"Never mind dressing now. Take your hat off and see
what you can do."
"Understand, I'm only holding it," said Phyllis, but she would have
been more than human if she had not flushed a little with pleasure
at the idea.
They began rehearsals again, and this time the opera went through
with scarcely a hitch. The little chorus girls had come to adore
Phyllis by this time, the boys were fond of her--there was scarcely
one of the cast whom she had not helped over or through or under
some one of the little hitches incident to private theatricals--and
the whole cast was on its tiptoes to see her through. There was a
new feeling in the thing, that Clarence noticed directly.
"By Jove, we ought to have insisted on her doing it from the first,"
he told Tiddy, his lieutenant, under his breath. "I could have
gotten twice as much work out of 'em.'
"Who'd have broken the news to Cousin?" he wanted to know.
Clarence eyed him with the detached interest that was his, and
meditated with a certain amusement on the changeableness of college
boys. Two weeks before Tiddy would have lowered his voice in
reverence at Gail's name. Then he glanced across at Joy, sitting
close by Phyllis in her gauzes, with her wonderful bronze-gold hair
hanging around her like a mantle, and conceded within himself that
it was not so surprising after all.
Sure enough, Gail was unable to bear much weight on her foot by the
next day.
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