y King looked consumptive, just like
her Aunt Felicity; and I hated her fiercely for it.

Sara Ray also managed to get through respectably, although she was
pitiably nervous. Her bow was naught but a short nod--"as if her head
worked on wires," whispered Felicity uncharitably--and the wave of her
lily-white hand more nearly resembled an agonized jerk than a wave. We
all felt relieved when she finished. She was, in a sense, one of "our
crowd," and we had been afraid she would disgrace us by breaking down.

Felicity followed her and recited her selection without haste, without
rest, and absolutely without any expression whatever. But what mattered
it how she recited? To look at her was sufficient. What with her
splendid fleece of golden curls, her great, brilliant blue eyes, her
exquisitely tinted face, her dimpled hands and arms, every member of the
audience must have felt it was worth the ten cents he had paid merely to
see her.

The Story Girl followed. An expectant silence fell over the room, and
Mr. Perkins' face lost the look of tense anxiety it had worn all the
evening. Here was a performer who could be depended on. No need to
fear stage fright or forgetfulness on her part. The Story Girl was not
looking her best that night. White never became her, and her face
was pale, though her eyes were splendid. But nobody thought about her
appearance when the power and magic of her voice caught and held her
listeners spellbound.

Her recitation was an old one, figuring in one of the School Readers,
and we scholars all knew it off by heart. Sara Ray alone had not heard
the Story Girl recite it. The latter had not been drilled at practices
as had the other pupils, Mr. Perkins choosing not to waste time teaching
her what she already knew far better than he did. The only time she had
recited it had been at the "dress rehearsal" two nights before, at which
Sara Ray had not been present.

In the poem a Florentine lady of old time, wedded to a cold and cruel
husband, had died, or was supposed to have died, and had been carried to
"the rich, the beautiful, the dreadful tomb" of her proud family. In
the night she wakened from her trance and made her escape. Chilled and
terrified, she had made her way to her husband's door, only to be driven
away brutally as a restless ghost by the horror-stricken inmates. A
similar reception awaited her at her father's. Then she had wandered
blindly through the streets of Florence until she had