that bombastic stuff. Do, do, my dear, speak it naturally."
"Hear her!" growled Chet. "And she wrote it!"
"I never really meant it to sound like that, Chet," declared Jess, shaking her head. "I really didn't. Why! it sounds almost as bad as 'The Duchess of Dawnleigh.'"
"Wha—what's that?" demanded Lance.
"Not Lil's play?" cried Laura. "Have you heard it?"
Jess told what she had heard at the door of the recitation room that afternoon, and they laughed over it.
"Yet I can see very well," continued Jess, "that you actors can make my words sound just as absurd if you want to. Do, do be natural."
"That's what I tell them," sighed Laura. "I am glad you heard Chet spouting here. One would think he was playing 'Hamlet,' or 'Richard III.'"
Chet was a little miffed. But he soon "came out of it," as Lance said, and he was so fond of Jess anyway that he would have tried his best to please her.
He grew more moderate in his "orating" and the girls, as critics, were better pleased. Lance took a leaf out of his chum's book, too, and
