saw her, and then luckily Dr. Trench came along
and drove her straight to the infirmary. She fainted while they were
bandaging her ankle."

"I'm very sorry," said Betty, her vision of a possible hasty recovery
dispelled by the last sentence. After a moment's hesitation she decided
not to go back to the Students' Building to consult Nita. It would be
better to bring some one over from the house to read the part for
to-night. It was important, but luckily it wasn't very long, and
somebody would have to learn it in time for the play the next evening.

So she hurried up-stairs again and the first person she met was Roberta
Lewis, marching down the corridor with a huge Greek dictionary under her
arm.

"Put that book down, Roberta; and come over to the rehearsal,"
commanded Betty. "Ermengarde St. John has sprained her ankle, and gone
to the infirmary and everybody's waiting."

"You mean that you want me to go and get her?" asked Roberta doubtfully.
"Because I think it would take two people to help her walk, if she's
very lame. She's awfully fat, you know."

"We want you to read Janet's part," explained Betty, "just for to-night,
until the committee can find some one to take it." And she gave a little
more explicit account of the state of affairs at the rehearsal.

"Yes, indeed, I'll be glad to," said Roberta readily. She was secretly
delighted to be furnished with an excuse for seeing the dress rehearsal.
She had longed with all her soul to be appointed a member of the
play-committee, but of course the house-president had not put her on;
she was the last person, so the president thought, who would be useful
there. And Roberta could not screw her courage up to the point of trying
for a place in the cast. So no one knew, since she had never told any
one, that she thought acting the most interesting thing in the world
and that she loved to act, in spite of the terrors of having an
audience. But she had let slip her one chance--the offer of a part in
Mary's famous melodrama away back in her freshman year--and she had
never had another.

And now, because she was Roberta Lewis, proud and shy and dreadfully
afraid of pushing in where she wasn't wanted, she did not think it
necessary to mention to Betty that she had borrowed a copy of the play
from little Ruth Howard, who was Sara, and that she had read it over
until she knew almost every line of it by heart.

Of course the committee were thrown into a state bordering upon