“Miss Thompson herself told me about it,” replied Grace.  “She called on mother yesterday afternoon, and, for a wonder, I was at home.  She said that it was not positively decided yet, but if the girls did well with the mid-year tests, then directly after there would be a try out for parts, and rehearsals would begin without delay.”

“How splendid!” exclaimed Anne, clasping her hands.  “How I would love to take part in it!”

“You will, without doubt, if there is a try out,” replied Grace.  “There is no one in school who can recite as you do; besides, you have been on the stage.”

“I shall try awfully hard for a part, even if it is only two lines,” said Anne earnestly.  “I wonder what play is to be chosen, and if it is to be given for the school only?”

“The play hasn’t been decided upon yet,” replied Grace, “but the object of it is to get some money for new books for the school library.  The plan is to charge fifty cents a piece for the tickets and to give each girl a certain number of them to sell.  However, I’m not going to bother much about the play now, for the senior team has just sent me a challenge to play them Saturday, December 12th.  So I’ll have to get the team together and go to work.”

“We’re awfully late this year about starting.  Don’t you think so?” asked Nora.

“Yes,” admitted Grace.  “I am just as enthusiastic over basketball as ever, only I haven’t had the time to devote to it that I did last year.”

“Never mind, you’ll make up for lost time after Thanksgiving,” said Anne soothingly.  “As for me, I’m going to dream about the play.”

“Anne, I believe you have more love for the stage than you will admit,” said Grace, laughing.  “You are all taken up with the idea of this play.”

“If one could live in the same atmosphere as that of home, then there could be no profession more delightful than that of the actor,” replied Anne thoughtfully.  “It is wonderful to feel that one is able to forget one’s self and become some one else.  But it is more wonderful to make one’s audience feel it, too.  To have them forget that one is anything except the living, breathing person whose character one is trying to portray.  I suppose it’s the sense of power that one has over people’s emotions that makes acting so fascinating.  It is the other side that I hate,” she added, with a slight shudder.

“I suppose theatrical people do undergo many hardships,” said Grace, who, now that the subject had been opened, wanted to hear more of Anne’s views of the stage.

“Unless any girl has remarkable talent, I should advise her to keep off the stage,” said Anne decidedly.  “Of course when a girl comes of a theatrical family for generations, like Maud Adams or Ethel Barrymore, then that is different.  She is practically born, bred and brought up in the theatre.  She is as carefully guarded as though she lived in a little village, simply because she