Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/653

Rh write her own part just as soon as she could. When they were all finished we would go over them together and make them join if possible. But Maudie looked worried, and I felt the same way. Then we went to our own rooms to go to work, for of course we did not want to begin where Sister Irmingarde would see us and look scared and remind us of the tragic past and interfere with the flow of our ideas.

As soon as I began to write Juliet's part I saw that I could not do it any better than Shakespeare did, for he knew the girlish heart, and there is indeed little he forgot to mention. So all I did was to put in more love and explain more about Juliet's clothes. And I had Romeo stay or the balcony all the time instead of going in, which was, of course, against the rules of etiquette. A few days later Maudie told me that she had done about the same thing with Romeo. She had made him more affectionate, but she did not change his lines much; and she agreed with me that it was more polite for him to talk to Juliet outside when he called so late. So you see our work was soon done; but, alas! it was different with our gifted young friends Mabel Blossom and Mabel Muriel Murphy.

Mabel Blossom saw, as soon as she began to write Laura's part, that, after all, Laura wasn't on the stage so very much. It was her husband most of the time, and you felt sorry for his poor wife at home, so your mind was full of her and you thought she was important. Mabel had to write pages and pages of lines for Laura to speak, telling how lonely she felt as she sat at home, and how heart-rending were the sufferings of a neglected wife. Mabel said before she got through with Laura she knew so much about how wives feel when they are left alone that she decided she would never, never marry. She could not run the risk. She wrote that to a nice boy she knew at home (she writes to him quite often, because he is her cousin), and he got very much excited and wrote back that she must remember there were men with souls above the dollar and that he was "one such." Mabel showed me the letter; but I should not have mentioned it here, because it is not a part of the story. Besides, it is Mabel's secret, deep in her heart, and she says no one must know; so I hope the gentle reader will hurry and forget it. Perhaps I should take it out, but when I began my Artistic Career I started by taking out everything I was not sure of, and 'most always when I got through there wasn't anything left.

To resume our narrative, as Hawthorne says, Mabel had a dreadfully hard time. Laura didn't do a single thing but sit on chairs and talk, and the whole act Mabel wrote was so dull that she asked if she couldn't have Adeline Thurston stand behind the scenes all the time and yell, "Give a dollar for May wheat," the way the husband did in the book. Maudie and I said yes, and that gave Adeline a place for her name on our playbill. It read:

A VOICE

But poor Adeline got so hoarse from rehearsing, that the night we really gave the play in Maudie's room she couldn't speak. There was no Voice, after all, and Mabel Blossom was dreadfully disappointed.

All this time the experience of our dear Mabel Muriel was going on, and it was 'most as bad. You see, she had to write Cleopatra all over, so she could dearly love Julius Cæsar and despise Mark Antony. Besides, she had to lay the scene in Chicago at the present time, and that made it even harder, of course. Mabel Muriel looked quite pale and worn before she got through. We were indeed sorry for her, Maudie and I, for she had a dreadful time about the asp, also, and couldn't find one. When Mabel Blossom giggled one day and suggested to her to let Adeline Thurston be the asp as well as the Voice, Mabel Muriel was so annoyed by her girlish frivolity that she didn't speak to Mabel for a whole day. We were all a little nervous by that time. At last Mabel Muriel found a small rubber snake, the kind they have in toy-shops, and it made a lovely asp and wriggled in the most natural way. So she felt lots better. But that caused more trouble, for the asp made Maudie Joyce so sick she couldn't rehearse on the same stage with Mabel Muriel; Maudie is dreadfully afraid of snakes, and even of little worms. They give her a strange, sinking feeling. Finally we persuaded Mabel Muriel not to use the asp till the