ey opened the door there was
Barbara Gordon, also bound for Miss Kingston's office, and much relieved
to find that her committee were not all waiting indignantly for their
chairman's tardy arrival. So whatever Jean had meant to say to Betty in
private necessarily went unsaid.

And then, after all her worriment, Jean was the best Shylock!

"Which is perfectly comical considering Bob's suspicions," Betty told
the green lizard, the only confidant to whom she could trust the play
committee's state-secrets.

All the committee had been astonished at Jean's success, and most of
them were disappointed. Christy or Emily Davis would have been so much
pleasanter to work with, or even Kitty Lacy, whom Miss Kingston
considered very talented. But Emily was theatrical, except in funny
parts, Christy was lifeless, and Kitty Lacy had not taken the trouble
to learn the lines properly and broke down at least once in every long
speech, thereby justifying the popular inversion of her name to Lazy
Kitty, a pseudonym which some college wag had fastened upon her early in
her freshman year.

"And because she's Kitty, it isn't safe to give her another chance,"
said Miss Kingston regretfully, when the fifteen aspiring Shylocks had
played their parts and the committee were comparing opinions. "Yes, I
agree with Barbara that Jean Eastman is by far the most promising
candidate, but----"

"But you don't think she's very good, now do you, Miss Kingston?" asked
Clara Ellis, a rather lugubrious individual, who had been put on the
committee because she was a "prod" in "English lit.," and not because
she had the least bit of executive ability.

Miss Kingston hesitated. "Why no, Clara, I don't. I'm afraid she won't
work up well; she doesn't seem to take criticism very kindly. But it's
too soon to judge of that. At present she certainly has a much better
conception of the part than any of the others."

"You don't think we've been too ambitious, do you, Miss Kingston?" asked
Barbara, anxiously. Barbara knew Jean well and the prospect of managing
the play with her capricious, selfish temperament to be catered to at
every turn was not a pleasant one.

"I've thought so all along," put in Clara Ellis, decidedly, before Miss
Kingston had had a chance to answer. "I think we ought to have made sure
of a good Shylock before we voted to give this play. It will be
perfectly awful to make a fizzle of it, and everything depends on
getting a good Shylock, doesn