Page:Girls of Central High on the Stage.djvu/214

204 which introduced the real play; but when the curtain went down there was no enthusiastic applause. The audience was expectant; but did not wholly understand it. And this was as it should be; the intent of that little prologue was merely to whet the appetite for the real play.

"The Spring Road" ran its three acts through with unvarying success. The applause grew more pronounced; the interest of the audience grew deeper. The fact that a young girl had written the text of the play became harder and harder to believe as the evening lengthened.

At the end—when the general lights went out, one by one upon the stage and left the two principal characters in the radiance of the spot light alone—and when this dimmed slowly and finally went out, the silence of the audience was momentous.

Jess, in the wings, clinging to her chum, waited, scarcely breathing, for the verdict. Had it failed? Had the little lesson she had tried to teach, and the pretty story she had told, failed to "get over?"

Suddenly there was a roar of delight from the back of the hall. Some of the older boys of Central High had managed to get tickets to this first performance, and, led by big Griff, they be-