ow I don't like the part of _Adelaide_ a bit," she
confided to Priscilla. "I'd like to play _Hazel_. I'm going to ask
Amy if she'd mind changing with me."

Priscilla stared.

"Of course she'd mind. She knows her part and has played it once. You
couldn't ask her to learn a new one just because you prefer hers."

Claire's air of depression became more marked.

"Priscilla," she quavered, "I don't see how I'm going to play that part.
I don't know how I'll endure it."

Priscilla's amazement grew. "Why, what's wrong with it? I think it's
particularly cute."

"Why, we're quarrelling every minute, you and I. And at the end of the
second act, you say--" Claire's voice died away in a dejected whimper.
But there was little balm for her grievance in Priscilla's unfeeling
laughter.

"Well, what of it? There's nothing real about it. A quarrel in a play
isn't anything."

"It's something to me," replied Claire, in tones nicely balanced between
despondency and tenderness. "When I think of your glaring at me and
saying such cruel, cruel things, it seems as if it would almost kill
me." She found her handkerchief, and actually shed a few tears, while
Priscilla choked down her exasperation, and tried to answer with fitting
nonchalance.

"Sorry you feel that way. We might ask Dorothea Clarke, the girl who
took the part before, to come up for a week, just to play it. Though I
must say," concluded Priscilla, her irritation getting the better of her
good resolutions, "that your idea impresses me as too silly for words."

The suggestion that Claire's cooperation was not necessary to the
success of the undertaking was all that was needed. Claire had no
intention of being reduced to the position of an on-looker, while the
others enjoyed the fun and reaped the plaudits of the enterprise.
Nothing more was heard of Claire's giving up her part, but in the
rehearsals she showed such a total lack of spirit, and played the
_role_ assigned her with so unmistakable an air of injury, that
patient Peggy was driven to the verge of desperation.

Nor were her troubles confined to Claire. Rosetta Muriel who had been
offered an unexacting part in the cast, confided to Peggy her intentions
in regard to costume. "I'm going to have an apple-green silk. The
skirt'll be scant, of course, and draped a little right here. And which
do you think would be stylisher, a square neck or--"

Peggy had by now recovered herself sufficiently to interrupt. "Why,
you