"Pretend you did," he whispered, and they continued to improvise.
After some five minutes of hopeless floundering, the prompter got them back on the track again, and the act proceeded, with the audience happily unaware that anything was missing.
Ten minutes later Lord Bromley was declaiming: "Cynthia, let us flee this place.
Its dark rooms haunt me; its silence oppresses me—" And the crash came.
For the first moment the audience was too startled to notice that the actors were also taken by surprise.
Then Lord Bromley, who was getting used to emergencies, pulled himself together and ejaculated, "Hark!
What was that sound?"
"I think it was a crash," said Cynthia.
He grasped her hand and ran back toward the balcony. "Give us our lines," he said to the prompter, as he went past.
The prompter had dropped the book, and couldn't find the place.
"Make them up," came in a piercing whisper from behind the balcony.
A silence ensued while the two dashed back and forth, looking excitedly up and down the stage.
Then the despairing Lord Bromley stretched out his arms in a gesture of supplication. "Cynthia," he burst out in tones of realistic longing, "I cannot bear this horrible suspense.
Let us flee." And they fled, fully three pages too early, forgetting to leave the letter which should have apprised the Irate Parent of the circumstance.
Georgie was tramping up and down the wings, wringing her hands and lamenting the day that ever Patty had been born.
"Hurry up that Parent before they stop clapping," said Lord Bromley, "and they'll never know the difference."
The poor old man, with his wig over one ear, was unceremoniously hustled on to the stage, where he raved up and down and swore never to forgive his ungrateful daughter in so realistic a manner that the audience forgot to wonder how he found it out.
In due time the runaways returned from the notary's, overcame the old man's harshness, received the parental blessing, and the curtain fell on a scene of domestic felicity that delighted the freshmen in the gallery.
Patty crawled out from under the balcony and fell on her knees at Georgie's feet.
Lord Bromley raised her up. "Never mind, Patty.
The audience doesn't know the difference; and, anyway, it was all for the best.
My mustache wouldn't have stayed on more than two minutes longer."
They could hear some one shouting in the front, "What's the matter with Georgie Merriles?" and a hundred voices replied, "She's all right!"
"Who's all right?"
"G-e-o-r-g-i-e M-e-r-r-i-l-e-s."
"What's the matter with the cast?"
"They're all right!"
The stage-door burst open and a crowd of congratulatory friends burst in and gathered around the disheveled actors and committee. "It's the best senior play since we've been in college."
"The freshmen are simply crazy over it."
"Lord Bromley, your room will be full of flowers for a month."
"Patty," called the head usher, over the heads of the others, "let me congratulate you.
I was in the very back of the room, and never heard a thing but your crash.
It sounded fine!"
"Patty," demanded Georgie, "what in the world were you doing?"
"I was counting the stars," said the contrite Patty, "and then I remembered too late, and I turned around suddenly, and it fell off.
I am terribly sorry."
"Never mind," laughed Georgie; "since it turned out well, I'll forgive you.
All the cast and committee," she said, raising her voice, "come up to my room for food.
I'm sorry I can't invite you all," she added to the girls crowded in the doorway, "but I live in a single."
XIV
The Mystery of the Shadowed Sophomore
"OH, I say, Bonnie—Bonnie Connaught!
Priscilla!
Wait a minute," called a girl from across the links, as the two were strolling homeward one afternoon, dragging their caddie-bags behind them.
They turned and waited while Bonnie's sophomore cousin, Mildred Connaught, dashed up.
She grasped them excitedly, and at the same time glanced over her shoulder with the air of a criminal who is being tracked.
"I want to tell you something," she panted. "Come in here where no one will see us"; and she dived into a clump of pine-trees growing by the path.
Priscilla and Bonnie followed more leisurely, and dropped down on the soft needles with an air of amused tolerance.
"Well, Mildred, what's the matter?" Bonnie inquired mildly.
The sophomore lowered her voice to an impressive whisper, although there was not a person within a hundred yards. "I am being followed," she said solemnly.