William—the good

“N-no,” said Ethel, “it’s all rather annoying. Mrs. Hawkins has taken up the whole thing, and is managing everything. Of course, we can’t stop her, because, after all, she’s going to finance the whole show, and have footlights put up and make it awfully posh, but still--she’s insisting on our doing scenes from ‘As You Like It.’ She would want Shakespeare. She’s so deadly dull herself.”

“And you’ll be Rosalind, I suppose?” said Mrs. Brown quite placidly.

Ethel was always the heroine of any play she acted in.

But Ethel’s face grew slightly overcast.

“Well,” she said, “that’s the question. Mrs. Hawkins is having a sort of trial at her house. It lies between me and Dolly Morton and Blanche Jones. She wants to hear us all read the part. She’s going to have all the committee at her house on Tuesday to hear us all read the part. It does seem rather silly, doesn’t it? I mean, making such a fuss about it. However----”

“Well, darling,” said Mrs. Brown, “when you are at the Hawkins’ I wish you’d ask them if they can let us have one bon-bon dish. I haven’t quite enough for all the tables at the whist drive, and Mrs. Hawkins kindly said she’d lend me as many as I liked.”

“Very well,” said Ethel absently. “I shall feel mad if she gives the part to Dolly Morton or Blanche Jones. I’ve had much more experience and after all----”

After all, Ethel’s silence said, she was far and away the prettiest girl in the village. She heaved a sigh.

Mrs. Brown, as if infected with the general melancholy, also heaved a sigh.

“The doctor says that William can get up to-morrow,” she said.

Ethel groaned.

“Well,” said her mother wearily, “he can’t be worse up than he’s been in bed the last few days.”

“Oh, can’t he?” said Ethel meaningly.

“But he’s been quite good this afternoon,” admitted Mrs. Brown in a voice almost of awe, “reading a book quietly all the time.”

“Then he’ll be awful to-morrow,” prophesied Ethel, gloomily, and with the suspicion of a nasal intonation.

Mrs. Brown looked at her suspiciously. “You haven’t got a cold, have you, Ethel?” she said.

“No,” said Ethel hastily.

“Because if you have,” said Mrs. Brown, “it’s probably influenza, and you must go to bed the minute you feel it coming on.”

William was downstairs. He did not, strangely enough, want to go out and play Red Indians with Henry, Douglas and Ginger. That lassitude which is always the after effect of influenza was heavy upon him. William, however, did not know that this was the cause.

He mistook it for a change of heart. He believed his character to be completely altered. He did not want to be a rough boy ranging over the countryside any longer. He wanted to be a boy wearing a halo and rescuing those around him from lives of crime. He watched Ethel meditatively where she sat on the other side of the room reading a newspaper. She looked irritatingly virtuous.

William found it difficult to imagine her drinking in secret or stealing pieces of silver from a neighbour’s drawing-room. It was, he reflected, just his luck to have a sister who was as irritating a sister as could be, and yet who would afford him no opportunity of rescuing her from a life of crime. His expression grew more and more morose as he watched her. There she sat with no thought in her mind but her silly magazine, resolutely refusing either to drink or steal.

As a matter of fact, Ethel had other thoughts in her mind than the magazine upon which she was apparently so intent. Ethel was afraid. There was no doubt at all that a cold was developing in Ethel’s head, and Ethel knew that, should her mother guess it, she would be summarily despatched to bed and would not be able to attend Mrs. Hawkins’ meeting, and that the result would be that either Dolly Morton or Blanche Jones would be Rosalind in the play.

Now, Ethel had set her heart upon being Rosalind. She felt that she would die of shame if Dolly Morton or Blanche Jones were chosen as Rosalind in her stead. And, therefore, the peculiar feeling of muzziness, the difficulty of enunciating certain consonants that she was at present experiencing, filled her with apprehension. A cold was coming on. There was no doubt of it at all. If only it could escape her mother’s notice till after to-day!

After to-day, when she was chosen as Rosalind, Ethel was willing to retire to bed and stay there as long as her mother wanted, but not till then. Hence she was silent and avoided her mother as much as possible. She might, of course, take something to stave it off (though she knew that that was generally impossible), but her mother had the keys of the medicine cupboard, and to ask for anything would arouse suspicion.

The muzziness was growing muzzier every minute, and she had a horrible suspicion that her nose was red.

Suddenly she remembered that when William’s cold began, her mother had bought a bottle of “Cold Cure,” and given it to him after meals for the first day before the cold changed to influenza and he had to go to bed. She believed that it was still in the sideboard cupboard in the dining-room. She’d sneak it upstairs and take some. It might just stave it off till to-night.