# Janey Takes a Thinking Part

Extracted from Success Magazine, April 1911, pp. 27–29, 44. Included in Janey (1911) as "Janey Interprets the Great Bard."
Janey Takes a
Thinking Part
by INEZ HAYNES GILLMORE
Author of “Janey Takes Her Pen in Hand,” “Janey and the Stork,” etc.
Illustrations by ADA C. WILLIAMSON
“UNCLE Jim! Uncle Jim!” Janey's voice rose to heights falsetto with excitement. She dashed into the study where Mr. Warriner was enjoying a post-luncheon pipe in the company of his guest, Mr. Robert Dixon, and landed in a breathless heap in her uncle's lap. “What do you think has happened? I'll give you three guesses. Take a long, long time to think, Uncle Jim, for it's about the most bee-yu-tifullest thing that ever was. I'd rather have it than go to the moving pictures every night. Oh, do hurry: but I know you can't guess it if you tried for a hundred years.” At the end of her breath, Janey stopped.
“All right,” said Uncle Jim. “Three guesses. I'll split with you, Bob. Let's go at this problem psychologically. Now, what in your opinion would be the summit of earthly bliss to a sulphitic young person of the female persuasion? I bet I hit a bull's-eye every time. The balloon man is making his annual raid on Scarsett.”
“No,” said Janey, in a contemptuous tone. “Much better than that. Your turn, Mr. Dixon.”
“There's a hand-organ in town with a monkey,” Mr. Dixon replied promptly.
“Oh, ever and ever so much better than that,” Janey commented. “Now you, Uncle Jim.”
“Somebody's given you a new doll, cat, bird, white mouse, guinea-pig, rabbit, squirrel, Gila monster, roc, dodo, phœnix, megatherium, minotaur, Jurassic bird or carnivorous dinosaur.”
“Uncle Jim,” Janey said reproachfully, “you know as well as you know your name that I don't understand some of those long words. But the others, I'd perfectly love to have.” And, indeed, her little expressive face had responded as sensitively to this catalogue of wonders as a dark stage to the touch on the keyboard of the electrician's hand. But now, obviously, she could contain herself no longer. “Mrs. Carroll is going to give 'Midsummer-Night's Dream' on her place. It's for the new hospital. Just think of it, Uncle Jim and Mr. Dixon! They'll act it right out on the back lawn among the trees. And she wants me to take part in it—and she says—”
Illustration: “What do you think has happened? I'll give you three guesses”
Janey stopped, petrified. For her remarks, instead of eliciting the enthusiasm which she expected, were cut short by twin explosions of dismay.
“The professional—heaven be thankit—takes a rest in the good old summertime,” said Mr. Dixon, “but the amateur is always with us.”
“Civil war in our midst again!” was Uncle Jim's equally disappointing comment; “and the Nortons and the Delanos on speaking terms for the first time in three years.” He did not stop even there. “Stung for ten dollars' worth of tickets!” he concluded ruefully.
Janey's face revealed every atom of the outrage of these speeches to her finer feelings. She had not expected it from either of them. Certainly not from Uncle Jim, on whom she had always depended for sympathy in the exploration of a constantly enlarging ten-year-old world. Even less did she expect it from Mr. Dixon who—
Mr. Dixon had been their guest for over a week, now. He was a press agent. When, just before his arrival, Janey asked Mr. Warriner what a press agent did, that gentleman, temporarily sardonic, replied that he wrote fairy tales.
Never before was guest of the Blair household anticipated with such rapture and received with such deference by its smallest inmate. At first, Janey could not make up her mind what a writer of fairy tales should look like. Finally, she decided he should be a combination of King Arthur of the Round Table, Uncle George of the Rollo books and Hop-o'-My-Thumb.
But, in point of fact, Mr. Dixon resembled none of these pleasing personages; at least, not according to the illustrations in Janey's fairy-books. He was very tall and lank, with the most extraordinary forehead that Janey had ever seen. It began, like everybody's else, just above the eyebrows and continued, unlike anybody's else, straight back between two clumps of fine, yellow hair, until it became his neck. He had an irregular, homely face, mainly furnished with a pair of big blue eyes that had a perpetual look of not trusting anything that they saw. Indeed, even Janey soon realized that, with him, skepticism was a prevailing state of mind. He did not even believe things that he read in the newspapers.
Immediately after dinner on the day of his arrival, Janey approached Mr. Dixon with a modest request that he tell her one of those fairy tales which Uncle Jim said he wrote. At this, Mr. Dixon sighed deeply. “Tell your Uncle Jim that I don't hold down any such easy job as writing fairy tales. Tell him I have to create worlds.”
Mr. Dixon was the first to recover after Janey's news. “What kind of a part have you, Janey?” he asked, politely.
“I don't know yet,” Janey answered, importantly. “I hope it's Hermia, or Helena or Hippolyta, though I wouldn't mind being Queen Titania. I asked Mr. Carroll about it and he said it was a thinking part. That sounds very 'sponsible to me, doesn't it to you, Uncle Jim? Do you suppose I'd have to think every moment?”
Both of Janey's listeners became very grave. Mr. Dixon quite palpably choked over this situation.
“Oh, and I almost forgot!” Janey went on. “Uncle Jim, Mrs. Carroll told me to ask you if you'd be Theseus and Mr. Dixon, Bottom?”
Again the simplest of remarks precipitated explosion. “Jim,” Mr. Dixon said, sternly, “it's the tall uncut for mine if you drag me into that bunch of amateurs. Remember I'm subject to epilepsy, kleptomania and tri-facial neuralgia.”
“Don't worry, son,” Mr. Warriner reassured him. “I'd rather participate in an Indian massacre myself. Be sure that you don't repeat that to Mrs. Carroll, Janey,” he interjected, hastily. “I'll write her a note.”
“Who is this trouble-provoking Mrs. Carroll, Jim?” Mr. Dixon asked.
One of the trouble provoking summer people,” Uncle Jim answered in an aside that Janey could not get. “Married to a man thirty years older than herself, round-shouldered with money—handsome creature—with wonderful gray eyes—no children—no brains—running over energy and temperament—ought to have gone on the stage—takes out in giving amateur shows on a really ripping scale—does an enormous amount of entertaining—great fun—I like her.”
“Uncle Jim, how do you learn a thinking part?” Janey asked.
“I'm afraid, Janey,” Uncle Jim answered, in what seemed an unnecessarily indirect way, “if there are any grown-up people in the play, you won't be likely to have a grown-up part. You'll probably be one of the fairies. Don't you remember Moth and Cobweb and Mustard-Seed and Peas-Blossom?”
“Uncle Jim” Janey said in an insulted tone, “of course I remember them. I always remember everything you read to me. In some ways,” she went on meditatively, “I'd rather be a fairy than anything else, although the fairies don't have so much to say. Now I guess I'll get the Shakespeare book and read 'Midsummer-Night's Dream' to Caroline. She's so little I 'spect she won't understand much of it, except when we get to the fairies. But I shall tell her that she must listen to every drop, for maybe when she's a big girl like me, somebody'll want her to take a thinking part, too.”
She came home after her first rehearsal a chastened person. “I've found out what a 'thinking part' is, Uncle Jim,” she announced. “It's where you don't have to say anything but just stand round. I'm not Helena nor Hermia nor Hippolyta nor Queen Titania. I'm not Moth nor Mustard-Seed nor Cobweb nor Peas-Blossom. I'm just a fairy that waits on Queen Titania.”
“What did they do to-day?” Uncle Jim asked, “and who's going to be in it?”
“Well, they didn't do so very much,” Janey answered. “They sort of walked 'round and read their parts out of their books. Oh, Uncle Jim and Mr. Dixon, I know you'll wish you'd said 'Yes' to Mrs. Carroll when I tell you something. There's a whole lot of really truly actors and actresses in it.”
“Tempts me almost beyond my strength,” Mr. Dixon said with an inflection that Janey considered very peculiar. “Where'd they get the Thespians, Jim?” he asked of Mr. Warriner.
“There's an actor-colony over in West Scarsett,” replied Uncle Jim.
“My eye—how that increases the quiet charm of this place for me,” commented Mr. Dixon. “Go on, Janey, tell us the worst.”
Janey did not need exhortation. “There's two of the most beautifullest ladies I ever saw in my life going to be Helena and Hermia. One's a blonde and the other's a brunette. And they just love each other, Uncle Jim. They always walk with arms round each other's waist.”
“Touching!” said Mr. Dixon. “Almost affects me to tears. Utterly unconscious, of course, of the picturesque effect!”
Janey bristled. “They know now,” she said with emphasis, “for I told them they looked sweet—just like Snow-White and Rose-Red in the tale.”
“And what did they say to that?” Mr. Dixon asked curiously.
“Snow-White said: 'Isn't she the cute little tad!' They're not really truly actresses, but their sisters and brothers are on the stage and they know all about it—they tell everybody how to do everything.”
“Charming type!” Mr. Dixon put in ominously. “I recognize it at once. Go on.”
“The lady who's going to be Queen Hippolyta is a really truly actress. Her p'tend name's Muriel Merle—Elsa Morgan told me—but her everyday name's Mrs. Dolan. She said she's played all Shakespeare—every speck of him with—with—now what was that name? Oh, yes, I know—Irving.”
“Press!” snorted Mr. Dixon. “Theresa Dolan understudied Terry a season. She played Portia once. And James—believe me—in point of pre-digestion, no breakfast-food has anything on the scenery when Theresa tears loose.”
And there's the most wonderfullest little girl to play Queen Titania. She's a really truly actress, too. Her p'tend name's Little Pearla.”
“Welcome little stranger!” Mr. Dixon groaned. “She was the Little Eva of that first experience of mine—just after I came out of college, you remember, Jim—Uncle Tomming through the West. And of all the insufferable, offensively precocious Little Pearla—” But he pulled himself up. “Go on, Janey!”
“Just think, Uncle Jim; she's only twelve and she's acted in ever so many plays—I mean drammers—that's what she called them. Let me see—what was that hard one? I said it over and over until I learned it. Oh, yes, 'Pelleas and Melisande' and 'Ten Nights in a Barroom' and 'The Tempest' and 'The Working-girl's Revenge' and 'Pinafore' and 'What's the Matter with Sarah?' But I've left the best to the end. There's the sweetest lady going to play Puck—Mary Miller—and—”
“Mary Miller!” exclaimed Mr. Dixon, “now you're shouting, Janey. You want to keep your eye peeled for that young woman, Jim. You're going to hear from her. Plenty of class to her as an actress and a perfectly good human being.”
“Then there's a young man who's a really, truly actor—he's the prettiest man I ever saw in my life, except Uncle Jim; his name's Henry Macy—”
Illustration: A long, vari-colored procession came winding through the trees
“Henry Macy!” Mr. Dixon interrupted again. “He's another come-on, Jim. Keep the other eye nailed to Macy!”
“Miss Miller and Mr. Macy and Mr. Carroll and me—we all talk a lot together. You see every one of us loves Shakespeare. Of course, they've read a great many more plays than I have. But, then, I've read more of Lamb's 'Tales from Shakespeare' than they have.”
“Oh, sure! I forgot!” said Uncle Jim. “Carroll's a first edition shark. He's bug on the Shakespeare Sonnets mystery. Writes an article occasionally.”
“He took Miss Miller and Mr. Macy and me into the library and showed us his Shakespeare books,” Janey said. “I told him that you bought me a little book with a Shakespeare play in it every time you read one to me and then he showed me some books—just like the one Shakespeare first published—I can't remember the names, but you told me all about them once.”
“His Shakespeariana is great!” Uncle Jim said, “the Wilmerding first folio—a half dozen quartos—and all the modern stuff a rich amateur can own.”
“Oh, it's such fun rehearsing.” Janey returned to the real subject. “Everybody is so nice. Everybody loves everybody else.”
“Wait!” was Mr. Dixon's last interpolation.
“There's going to be a rehearsal every other day for a week or two,” Janey concluded joyfully, “then every day. We children are only expected to come twice a week, but I asked Mrs. Carroll if 1 could come every day and she said I could if I'd be good. Oh, I'm so happy!”
It was evident from other signs that this was the star experience of Janey's life. Every night she lugged the big Shakespeare off the book-shelf and pored over “Midsummer-Night's Dream” until bedtime.
“Do you know the whole play now, Janey?” Uncle Jim asked more than once.
An interval of a week went by without mention of Scarsett's most important social event. Then, one day, Mr. Warriner overheard his sister admonishing Janey.
“I don't know why you've got to go to those rehearsals every afternoon,” Mrs. Blair was saying. “Besides, you must be under foot all the time.”
“Mother, I'm not!” Janey said indignantly. “I run errands all the time. Oh, do let me go.”
“Oh, let her go, Miriam,” Mr. Warriner pleaded. “It's an experience of a lifetime. She won't forget it as long as she lives.”
“But, Jim, I hear her reciting those long speeches every night before she falls asleep,” Mrs. Blair said.
“Well, a little Shakespeare won't hurt her,” responded Mr. Warriner.
“How are the rehearsals going on, Janey?” he asked the next time he and his friend and his niece were together.
“Well,” said Janey in a judicial tone, “not so good as they might. You know those two that I called Snow-White and Rose-Red?” she went on patiently.
“Yes,” said Uncle Jim and Mr. Dixon together.
“They're mad at each other and they won't speak.”
Illustration: Janey snuggled up in her mother's arms, closed her eyes and relaxed.
Mr. Dixon did not seem surprised. “What's the alleged offense?” he asked.
“Snow-White said that Rose-Red hogged the stage.”
“Which, without doubt, she did,” Mr. Dixon said promptly.
“And Rose-Red says that all Snow-White does is stand around and flirt with the men.”
“Which, without doubt, she does,” said Mr. Dixon. “Does anybody else speak?”
“A lot do,” Janey declared indignantly. “Mr. Macy speaks to everybody, and so does Miss Miller. She's so sweet and dear. She tells all the children just what to do. And she answers every question they ask, though she laughs at us all the time. And when nobody needs her, she reads 'As You Like It' to me and we decide just how we'd put it on if we were going to give it. But Mrs. Dolan doesn't speak to Theseus any more—to any of the Theseuses,” Janey corrected herself; “they've had a lot. Mrs. Dolan didn't like the way the first one helped her down from the throne. So he had to be Wall. Then they got another Theseus and he was too short. Then they got another one and Mrs. Dolan said she wouldn't play with him unless they had his Adam's apple removed. I heard her say to-day that she'd about made up her mind to throw up her part. The Theseus they've got new is—well, Mrs. Dolan said he snuffles all the time and she hates him. They speak,” Janey concluded, “but not very often.”
“Up-stage!” Mr. Dixon commented, “Theresa always gets up-stage. What's wrong with that angel-child, Little Pearla?” he inquired blandly.
“Why, Mr. Dixon, how did you know anything was wrong?” Janey asked in surprise. “Little Pearla is mad, too. She says she's got to have a spot. She says she's never acted without a spot. What's a spot, Mr. Dixon?”
“It's a round circle of light, Janey,” Mr. Dixon explained. “Stage people choke to death if it isn't administered in large doses.”
“Then,” Janey went on in a puzzled tone, “she doesn't like the little girl who's playing Peas-Blossom—she's Mrs. Carroll's niece. I don't know why, for she's a perfickly bee-yu-tiful little girl and dances—oh, Uncle Jim, wait till you see her dance!”
“Bob,” Uncle Jim remarked thoughtfully, “we made a great mistake in not getting into this affair. Those rehearsals must be a scream.”
But Mr. Dixon only shuddered.
The next day Janey brought a lugubrious face into the library. “Oh, Uncle Jim,” she said soberly, “I feel drefful. I'm afraid they're not going to give ' 'Midsummer-Night's Dream' after all.”
Uncle Jim stopped working. Mr. Dixon, who had been busy at the secretary, dropped his pen. “What's up, Janey,” he asked. Somehow Janey got the impression that Mr. Dixon knew just what she was going to say; was even anticipating it with amusement.
“Well,” Janey went on, “I was reading in the library to-day and Mrs. Carroll came in. And she looked awfully white and tired and sick and she laid down on the couch and burst out crying and she said that if anybody else in the cast got mad with anybody, or asked her to do something that no human being could do, or threatened to throw up her part, she would drown herself in the pond.”
“And what did Mr. Carroll say?” Uncle Jim asked.
“He said, 'My dear, I told you so, but you would do it.' And she said, 'Peter, if you say, “I told you so,” again to me, I'll bite you.' And he said; 'All right, my dear, I won't.' And she said, 'As heaven is my witness, Peter, “never again.”' 'And he said, 'Connie, this is the fifth time.' And she said, 'I know it is and if I ever mention the word 'theatricals' again, just send me to the asylum and divide my things. I'm fit to be tied now. But do, for goodness sake, help me out of it, Peter. This is the last time I'll ever ask it of you. I don't know what to do with that Dolan woman. I can't speak to her without frothing at the mouth—I despise her so. And as for that toad of a Little Pearla—she belongs in a bottle marked poison. You can manage them better than I can, Peter, and if you don't do something, I'll have to call it off. And I'd rather die than give in to that Dolan creature.”
“What did Mr. Carroll say to that?” Mr. Dixon asked.
“He said, 'Connie, I'll do it again, but it's the last time. I feel like a Christian martyr thrown into an antitheatre of wild beasts.”
“I love Carroll,” Mr. Dixon said, thoughtfully. “We are kindred souls. What is he like, Janey?”
“He squeaks,” Janey said promptly. “His voice squeaks and his shirt squeaks and his shoes squeak. And his hair is funny.”
“Toupee,” said Uncle Jim in a swift aside to Mr. Dixon. “Lives in a frock-coat,” he went on; “puts it on in the morning when he gets up and never takes it off until he goes to bed; also a straw hat. Oh, Carroll's great.”
“Uncle Jim,” Janey said in a heartbroken voice, “do you suppose they'll give it up?”
“Give it up!” Mr. Dixon answered her. “Give it up! Why, Janey, such a thing never happened in the history of civilization. The cast may be decimated by war, disease, death and the chance of a professional engagement, but the play, somehow or other, always comes off.”
And indeed, it looked as if Mr. Dixon said sooth. For Janey returned from the next rehearsal, an embodied smile. “The play is going to be given, Uncle Jim,” she said, joyfully. “Poor Mrs. Carroll went away to a sanatorium yesterday afternoon. She's got to rest up before the performance, and Mr. Carroll is taking care of the rehearsals. He's so nice. He listens to every complaint so politely, and then goes right on. He says funny things, too, so everybody laughs. Everybody loves him. You'll see why. To-day, before the rehearsal began, I was with him, reading in the library, and he sent for Mrs. Dolan to come up there. And when she came, he told her that Mrs. Carroll had fallen sick, and at first he was afraid that he would have to give up the show, and then he thought that with her help everything would go all right. And Mrs. Dolan was awful cross and she said that she couldn't do any more than she was doing and that she was thinking of getting out of the whole business anyway and she never had lowered herself to play with amateurs before and she never would again. And Mr. Carroll said he didn't mean that she was to work harder, only he had a favor to ask her, There was a reporter coming to see her to-night to write something about her for the Sunday paper. And Mr. Carroll asked her if she would be sure to see the reporter because it made the show seem so important to have Muriel Merle in it. And Mr. Carroll asked her if she had plenty of pictures of herself because he said the reporter would want at least a dozen. And, oh, Mrs. Dolan has been so nice to everybody ever since.”
Janey stopped almost out of breath.
“Then Mr. Carroll sent for Little Pearla and he told her that he was sorry she couldn't have the spot, but as it was an out-of-doors afternoon performance, he didn't see how it could be done. And he asked her what kind of flowers did she like, for he was going to see that she had a bushel sent her at the performance. And, oh, Little Pearla's been so good ever since; only,” Janey concluded sorrowfully, “she doesn't speak to any of us children any more.”
“The returns are not all in, yet,” Mr. Dixon remarked. “How'd he square Rose-Red and Snow-White?”
“I don't know what 'square' means,” Janey said, severely. “I was just going to tell you some more. He sent for them next. You know they don't speak any more. Mr. Carroll told them that he wanted to have a picture of them on the front page of the program, the way they used to walk with their arms round each other's neck and their heads together, because they looked so beautiful that way. And he said to go to a photographer and have them taken and charge it to him. And, oh, they've been so sweet to each other ever since, and now, all the time, they walk the way they used to, with their arms 'round each other's waist. That's not all,” Janey added quickly, as Uncle Jim showed signs of interrupting.
“Then Mr. Carroll told one of the maids to go 'round to all the gentlemen in the cast and tell them to please help themselves to anything they wanted in the sideboard at the end of the rehearsal. And the moment it was through, they all rushed into the house. Rose-Red said: 'Ain't it vulgar to beat it like that—all for a club sandwich and a stein of suds?' What did she mean by 'suds'—not soap-suds?”
As usual, nobody paid any attention to her question.
“I do love Carroll,” said Mr. Dixon. “If he needed the money, I'd go over and offer him my job. It would be an insult to his abilities, though. He's an impressario—he is!”
As Mr. Dixon prophesied, the play was produced and on the actual date first set for it. Like all other amateur events, it was a success from every point of view—artistic, social and financial.
From one until two o'clock of the fateful afternoon, a line of motors, traps, carryalls, buggies, wagons, barges and bicycles bore from every point of the compass upon the Carroll place. They amalgamated at the entrance, turned into the driveway, continued past the house and stopped at the out-of-doors playhouse. That playhouse received the approval of both Mr. Warriner and Mr. Dixon; for the stage lay at one end of a deep hollow, grass-grown and tree-encircled, which formed a natural amphitheater. The August sky stretched a roof above it that, one moment, sagged low with billowy clouds and the next stretched taut a plane of shining blue. Near the entrance, Mrs. Carroll, completely restored, bloomingly beautiful, trailing a triumphant gown, welcomed—
(“Shirtwaists and muslins and foulards and pongees and Peter Thompson suits and automobile coats and middy-blouses and sweaters and mandarin coats and even Doucet and Paquin,” was the way Mr. Dixon summed it up)—welcomed and welcomed and welcomed—welcomed until the mellow blast of a horn sent the audience scurrying to the benches—welcomed until there came winding through the trees at the back the long, vari-colored procession of the cast, a lithe and beautiful Puck dancing joyously ahead.
All the possible mishaps of the amateur show manifested themselves with relentless inevitability. The professionals, letter-perfect, of course, showed at their best. The amateurs ran the entire gamut from whispering ineptitudes to blatant self-consciousness. Sometimes the orchestra, discoursing Mendelssohn, came in at the right moment, but the cast never did. Cues got misplaced, but always found themselves sooner or later. The prompter proved to be utterly inadequate and ultimately vanished. He was not missed, however, for—but that comes later.
Notwithstanding—
“I'm sorry Bill Shakespeare isn't here to see this,” Mr. Warriner said, in the first pause. “No sarcasm intended. I think it would warm the cockles of his heart. I have never seen a better setting for those lines.”
“Yes,” Mr. Dixon agreed, and he was quite as serious as his companion; “there's a charm about the amateur show that the professional never has—a kind of innocence like the beauté du diable in woman—it gets, somehow, an effect of unpremeditation. Gad, how I do love Shakespeare!” he concluded abruptly.
Perhaps of all the details that helped produce the effect Mr. Dixon noted, no one was more striking than the band of children who attended Queen Titania. Ranging from a two-year old baby, who was wheeled on in a flower-covered basket, who babbled and bubbled and kicked and jounced through the entire scene, to children of ten years, it was rainbow-color as to tarlatan costumes, gold as to gauzy wings, slender wands, pointed shoes, absolutely natural as to expression and posing. Most noticeable of them all, a tiny sea-green fairy flitted constantly back and forth; for not even the principals were so busy as she.
It was she who marshaled the children into files and marched them into the wings just before the cue to their entrance sounded. It was she who, landing them safely in the wings again after the scene was over, pulled out star-spangled skirts to pristine freshness, perked up drooping wings, straightened fairy crowns and rearranged tumbled curls. It was she who, in-between-times, flew from grown-up to grown-up, handing out properties for scenes yet to come and gathering in properties from scenes just ended. It was she who received the barking puppy, banished prematurely from the interlude of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” and quieted him to sleep. It was she who carefully lighted the lantern with which Moonshine illuminated that tragedy and who prudently blew it out the moment it returned to her hand. It was she, in fact, who, after the disappearance of the prompter, whispered lost lines to more than one frenzied amateur wrestling with stage fright.
Of all this, both Mr. Warriner and Mr. Dixon took amused cognizance, although their only comments were surreptitious nudges. It didn't pass unnoticed, however.
“There!” suddenly came to their ears from the row back of them, in the midst of the first Oberon and Titania scene. “That little green fairy is the one Mary's been talking so much about—Janey Blair. Isn't she a darling? Henry Macy is just as crazy about her! They say she's the most amusing little thing—precocious in a sense—the kind of child who reads everything—but a perfect baby in many ways—and so willing and obedient. Mary says that she's been more interested than anybody else to make the play a success. She says Janey knows every part in it—she has one of those wonderful parrot-memories that children sometimes have. And she's never missed a rehearsal. Mary says, in the worst of the fight, when Dolan simply refused to go on, that child would say Hippolyta's lines in order to give Theseus a rehearsal. And sometimes, when Hermia was talking to the men, she'd say, 'Oh, Janey, you do this scene for me—you know it as well as I do.' And Janey would do it, too.”
During an intermission in which everybody stood up to ward off cramp, Mr. Dixon caught a glimpse of the owner of the voice. “It's Mary Miller's mother,” he said in an undertone to Uncle Jim.
The voice took up its comment when the fairies made their next appearance. “Look,” it said, “isn't she a dear? Now, watch her carefully this time! She's got those children safely on and now she'll begin to act. Mary says she always does that. Look at her—look at her! Isn't she too killing for words? Take my glasses and get that expression. She's absolutely convinced that she's a fairy. Mary says she acts hard in every scene until it's time to get the children off. Then she stops being a fairy and becomes a stage-manager again. You wait now. There—there—didn't I tell you? Isn't she a darling? Look at the way she's manœuvering to get them started! Isn't she the cunningest duck? I think she's the best thing in it.”
The Warriner party waited after the play was over only long enough to congratulate Mrs. Carroll on its success. Then they whipped Janey—an utterly exhausted Janey—tarlatan costume, starry crown, gold wand, rouged cheeks and all, into the motor. Janey snuggled up into her mother's arms, closed her eyes and relaxed.
“Janey,” Mr. Dixon said, after they had pulled themselves out of the snarl of equipages at the gate, “there's considerable thought to a thinking part as you interpret it.”
“Well,” Janey sighed, “I've made up my mind that it's harder to take a part and think all the time than take a part and just act.”
Perhaps somebody else thought so, too. A few days later an express package, addressed to Miss Jane Elizabeth Blair, arrived at the Warriner house. This was so unusual an event that the whole family gathered around Janey to watch her open it. From the paper wrapping dropped a wooden box. Out of this came a case of leather, faded, scratched and old. Janey unhooked the clasp with trembling fingers. Inside, strung on a delicate gold chain, lay a flat, round locket of an antique style, studded with enamel and pearls.
“Oh,” gasped Janey, “how bee-yu-tiful! Is it really for me? Yes, my name's written in that little circle. 'Janey, from P. A.C.' P. A. C.—P. A. C.,” she repeated. “Peter A. Carroll,” she added, in an inspired burst. “Oh, wasn't that good of him! But there's something else. I don't understand it. Multum—what is it, Uncle Jim?”
Uncle Jim took the locket. “Multum in parvo,” he said. “That's Latin, Janey?”
“And what does it mean?” Janey asked.
Uncle Jim hesitated. “It means,” he said, slowly, “that a very little girl may have a very valiant spirit.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 53 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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