"Give it to Helen Adams," said Nita, turning back to Josephine. "She can
mark proof. Go on Josephine, I'm listening, and don't stop again for
anybody."

Josephine, who was the father of the large and irrepressible Carmichael
family, had just finished declaiming her longest speech with
praiseworthy regard for its meaning, when somebody called out,
"Ermengarde St. John isn't here yet."

Nita sank down in Miss Amelia Minchen's armchair with a little moan of
despair. "Somebody go and get her," she said. "Betty Wales, you'd better
go. You can dress people fastest."

It seemed to Betty, as she hurried down-stairs and over to the Belden,
that she had toiled along the same route, laden with screens, rugs and
couch-covers, at least a hundred times that afternoon. She was tired and
exasperated at this final hitch, and she burst into the room of the fat
freshman who had Ermengarde's part with scant ceremony. What was her
amazement to find it quite empty.

"Oh, she can't have forgotten and gone off somewhere!" wailed Betty.
"Why, every one was talking about the rehearsal at dinner time."

The cast and committee included so many members of the house that it was
almost depopulated, and none of the few girls whom Betty could find knew
anything about the missing Ermengarde.

"I must have passed her on the way here," Betty decided at last, and
rushed down-stairs again. As she went by the matron's door she almost
ran into that lady, hurrying out.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Kent," she said. "You haven't seen
Ermengarde--that is, I mean Janet Kirk, have you?"

"No, not yet," said Mrs. Kent briskly. "I only heard about it five
minutes ago. I'm just getting ready now to go up and take the poor child
some things she's sent for."

"But she isn't in her room," said Betty, bewildered but certain that
Mrs. Kent's apparent affection for the irresponsible Janet was very
ill-bestowed.

"Of course not, my dear," returned Mrs. Kent, serenely. "She's at the
infirmary with a badly sprained ankle. She'll have to keep off it for a
month at least, the doctor says."

[Illustration: "OH, I BEG YOUR PARDON"]

"Oh, Mrs. Kent!" wailed Betty. "And she's Ermengarde St. John in the
house-play. What can we do?"

Mrs. Kent shook her head helplessly. "You'll have to do without Janet,"
she said. "That's certain. She was on her way home to dinner when she
slipped on a piece of ice near the campus-gate. She lay there several
minutes before any one