ent waiting for the lips
to speak, and Margaret felt her trust had been justified and her heart
had found its home. Right there behind the school-house, out in the
great wide night, while the crowded, clamoring audience waited for them,
and the young actors grew frantic, they plighted their troth, his lips
upon hers, and with not a word spoken.

Voices from the dressing-room roused them. "Come in quick, Mr. Gardley;
it's time for the curtain to rise, and everybody is ready. Where on
earth has Miss Earle vanished? Miss Earle! Oh, Miss Earle!"

There was a rush to the dressing-room to find the missing ones; but Bud,
as ever, present where was the most need, stood with his back to the
outside world in the door of the dressing-room and called loudly:

"They're comin', all right. Go on! Get to your places. Miss Earle says
to get to your places."

The two in the darkness groped for each other's hands as they stood
suddenly apart, and with one quick pressure and a glance hurried in.
There was not any need for words. They understood, these two, and
trusted.

With her cheeks glowing now, and her eyes like two stars, Margaret fled
across the stage and took her place at the piano again, just as the
curtain began to be drawn; and Forsythe, who had been slightly uneasy at
the look on her face as she left them, wondered now and leaned forward
to tell her how well she was looking.

He kept his honeyed phrase to himself, however, for she was not heeding
him. Her eyes were on the rising curtain, and Forsythe suddenly
remembered that this was the scene in which Jed was to have
appeared--and Jed had a broken leg! What had Margaret done about it? It
was scarcely a part that could be left out. Why hadn't he thought of it
sooner and offered to take it? He could have bluffed it out somehow--he
had heard it so much--made up words where he couldn't remember them all,
and it would have been a splendid opportunity to do some real
love-making with Rosa. Why hadn't he thought of it? Why hadn't Rosa?
Perhaps she hadn't heard about Jed soon enough to suggest it.

The curtain was fully open now, and Bud's voice as Peter Quince, a
trifle high and cracked with excitement, broke the stillness, while the
awed audience gazed upon this new, strange world presented to them.

"Is all our company here?" lilted out Bud, excitedly, and Nick Bottom
replied with Gardley's voice:

"You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the
scrip.