ccompaniment you'll spoil my part. You'll surely never go and fail me!"

The instruments had been put under the piano. Patricia Marshall handed
them forth, and sounded the notes for them to be tuned. Clarice Nixon
was placing chairs and music-stands. Garnet was tolerably composed, but
Winona was suffering from a bad attack of that most unpleasant malady
"stage fright." She would have given worlds for a trapdoor in the
platform to open, and allow her to subside out of sight. No such
convenient arrangement, however, had been provided for the use of
bashful performers, the planks were solid, and guaranteed not to give
way under any circumstances. There was nothing for it but to take her
seat in full view of the audience. There were slightly over two hundred
girls in the room, but to Winona's fevered imagination there appeared to
be thousands. She wondered how she could ever have had the folly to
place herself in such a public situation. Garnet was sounding a few
notes and looking at her to begin. For one dreadful moment the room
whirled. Perhaps Margaret saw and understood; she laid her hand on
Winona's shaking arm, and whispered encouragingly:

"Go on! Don't mind the audience. Just remember that you're playing for
the form trophy!"

A sudden revulsion of feeling swept over Winona. All the school
patriotism aroused within her by Margaret's speech surged up to meet the
crisis. She was no longer an isolated atom, a girl fresh from home, and
on trial before the critical eyes of her new form, but a unit in the
great life of the school, bound to play her part for the good of the
whole, and specially pledged not to fail Garnet in this emergency. Self
faded in the larger vision. The color flooded back into her face. She
made a desperate effort, and struck the opening chords.

As her friend had reminded her, a duet was quite a different matter from
a solo. Directly the mandoline part began, her confidence returned. She
tried to think that she was only playing an accompaniment for Garnet.
The piece was not difficult, it was in D, quite the easiest key for the
guitar, with very few accidentals or high positions. She took courage,
and struck her strings crisply, so that the tone rang out well. Her
instrument was a good one, very true and mellow, and her mother had
taught her the liquid Spanish touch which showed it to its best
advantage. Garnet also was doing her best. Her plectrum vibrated evenly
and rapidly, and the metallic twa