Brent’s was the local emporium for everything needed, from the college standpoint.  Not only were its shelves filled with goods which varied from library supplies to latest fiction, but there was an ice cream parlor annex patronized almost entirely by students.

Anne was engrossed over a selection of patterns at the counter in the back of the store.  She was to play Celia, and Norma was Rosalind.  Charity always said that Norma’s profile and long corn-colored hair brought her more undeserved honors than any qualities of excellence she possessed.

“I’m so glad you came along just now,” sighed Anne.  “Mother says I ought to dress very simply, but a Duke’s daughter would have even a stuff dress cut in fashion, wouldn’t she?  Besides, I can show a lot of taste in my cap.  Norma’s got a perfectly wonderful cloak made of a dark green felt piano cover.”

Kit helped her select a dull violet goods, with white underslip that showed through the slashes in the sleeves.  Anne had been hovering over an old rose that absolutely killed any glint of color in her light brown hair.

“Never, never,” warned Kit, “let old rose come near you, if you’ve got freckles or sandy hair.  Don’t you notice, Anne, how I cling to all the soft pastel nondescript tones?  That’s because my eldest sister is an artist, and we all have to live up to it more or less now.  When Jean wants a new dress she slips away and communes with nature, until she’s hit the right tone values.  You should have seen her face one day when some one asked Doris her favorite color, and she said, ‘plaid.’”

“We’re going to be late to rehearsal,” Anne declared with a sigh, as they rose to leave.

“We are late now,” rejoined Kit, cheerfully.  “They’ll prize us all the more if we keep ourselves kind of scarce.  Rex told me to order walnut sundae for him, and wait until he comes back.”

Just at this moment Anne laid her finger on her lips and glanced impressively at a table on the other side of the room.  There sat Amy with Peggy Porter and Norma, all of them dreamily imbibing ice cream sodas, just as though Shakespearian rehearsals were occasions unknown in their engagement calendars.

Kit rose and crossed the room with caution until she stood behind Amy and intoned sepulchrally from Macbeth: 

    “What ho!  Ye secret, black and midnight hags, what is’t ye do?”

CHAPTER XVII

HOPE’S PRIMROSE PATH

“Well, we waited fifteen minutes for you,” protested Amy, laughingly, “and Norma had to come down-town to try and find some high boots like Julia Marlowe wore for Rosalind.  She’s had that old picture of her pinned up on the wall for two weeks.”