"Just try her! She knows it all by heart. And she's a blonde."
"Why haven't I seen her before, if she's so good? Is she in the chorus?" demanded the doubtful professor.
"She hasn't had any part in the play at all--yet," declared Neale O'Neil, banking all upon this chance for Agnes. "But you just try her out!"
"Perfectly," declared the boy, earnestly.
He dared say no more, but he watched the professor's face sharply.
"I don't suppose she can do any more harm than the other," muttered the desperate director. "Send her up here, boy. Odd I should not have known there was an understudy for Innocent Delight."
Neale went down to the row of seats in which Agnes and a few of the "penitent sisterhood" sat. "Say!" he said, grinning at Agnes and whispering into her pretty ear, "Now's your chance to show us what you can do."
"What do you mean, Neale O'Neil?" she gasped.
"The professor is looking for somebody to walk through Trix's part--just for this rehearsal, of course."
"Oh, Neale!" exclaimed the Corner House girl, clasping her hands. "They'd never let me do it."
"I don't believe you can," laughed Neale. "But you can try if you want to. He told me to send you up to him. There he stands on the stage now."
Agnes rose up giddily. At first she felt that she could not stand. Everything seemed whirling about her. Neale, with his past experience of the circus in his mind, had an uncanny appreciation of her feelings.
"Buck up!" he whispered. "Don't have stage-fright. You don't have to say half the words if you don't want to."
She flashed him a wonderful look. Her vision cleared and she smiled. Right there and then Agnes, by some subtle power that had been given her when she was born into this world, became changed into the character of Innocent Delight--the part which she had already learned so well.
She had sat here throughout each rehearsal and listened to Professor Ware's comments and the stage manager's instructions. She knew the cues perfectly. There was not an inflection or pose in the part that she had not perfected her voice and body in. The other girls watched her move toward the stage curiously--Neale with a feeling that he had never really known his little friend before.
"Hello, who's this?" asked one of the male professionals when Agnes came to the group upon the stage.