“Will you come back to London Junction ever?” Florrie asked tremulously.

Marcia shook her head firmly in the negative, and Florrie sobbed over this imminent parting until Marcia promised to come and get her some day. If she won the Lesterville County Elocution Prize, she would take up acting instead of art, and she promised that Florrie could see all her shows free.

While Marcia was desperately plotting ways to run away, and an immediate means of getting to Lesterville for the big day that would open all the gates, the Chautauqua came to town. Mrs. Gross took David and Marcia to a Dramatic Reading. One lady took all the parts in “The Lion and the Mouse,” changing her voice, jumping up and sitting down all over the stage, conjuring up invisible scenery, until Marcia was in an excited daze, resolved that this would be her chosen work. She managed to find a copy of the play at the library and read it softly in the toilet (changing her voice marvelously and stopping dead when anyone came in), and she hoped to hear more of the lady’s talents, but the next performance was on the “Poetry of Rabindranath Tagore,” and Marcia decided it couldn’t be much or the Woman’s Century Reading Club wouldn’t be going in a body. The high school boys did odd jobs around the Chautauqua tent, and there were college boys who traveled with the management. This was all that interested Lena and Mary Evelyn, who managed to hang around the grounds making acquaintance of many strange boys by the simple process of cutting across the road to walk in front of them in dignified conversation, sometimes pausing to frown at the boys “following” them, until a sparkling interchange of repartee ensued. Lena walked with one boy and Mary Evelyn with the other. Lena stayed all night with Mary Evelyn on these occasions, and Papa did not dare forbid this for some reason, in spite of his wife’s protests that Lena was having dates. She reported that her brother Vance, now staying at the hotel, said he and a tony friend from Lesterville had dated up Lena and Myrtle Chase one night and gone riding all over the country. Papa said he didn’t believe a word Vance Hawkins ever said, so no action came of this. To make up for this leniency he forbade Marcia and Florrie to go out nights to watch people coming and going from the Chautauqua.