The car sped away, leaving Phil standing bareheaded in the sunshine, staring after it.  The mocking silver lilt of Carlotta Cressy’s laughter drifted back to him.  He shrugged, jammed on his hat and strode off in the direction of the trolley car.

Dick Carson might just as well have spared himself the pain of jealousy.  Phil had already forgotten Tony, was remembering only Carlotta, who would never deliberately do a mite of harm to the moon, would merely want to play with it at her fancy and leave it at her whim for somebody else to replace, if anybody cared to take the pains.  And what was a moon more or less anyway?

CHAPTER II

WITH ROSALIND IN ARDEN

Of course it is understood that every graduating class rightfully asserts, and is backed up in its belief by doting and nobly partisan relatives and blindly devoted, hyperbolic friends, that its particular, unique and proper senior dramatics is the most glorious and unforgettable performance in all the histrionic annals of the college, a thing to make Will Shakespeare himself rise and applaud from his high and far off hills of Paradise.

Certainly Tony’s class knew, past any qualms of doubt, and made no bones of proclaiming its conviction that there never had been such a wonderful “As You Like It” and that never, so long as the stars kept their seats in the heavens and senior classes produced Shakespeare—­two practically synonymous conditions—­would there ever be such another Rosalind as Tony Holiday, so fresh, so spontaneous, so happy in her acting, so bewitchingly winsome to behold, so boyish, yet so exquisitely feminine in her doublet and hose, so daring, so dainty, so full of wit and grace and sparkle, so tender, so merry, so natural, so all-in-all and utterly as Will himself would have liked his “right Rosalind” to be.

So the class maintained and so they chanted soon and late, in many keys, “with a hey and a ho and a hey nonino.”  And who so bold or malicious, or age cankered as to dispute the dictum?  Is it not youth’s privilege to fling enthusiasm and superlatives to the wind and to deal in glorious arrogance?

It must be admitted, however, in due justice, that the class that played “As You Like It” that year had some grounds on which to base its pretensions and vain-glory.  For had not a great stage manager been present and applauded until his palms were purple and perspiration beaded his beak of a nose?  Had he not, as the last curtain, descended, blown his nose, mopped his brow, exclaimed “God bless my soul!” three times in succession and demanded to be shown without delay into the presence of Rosalind?

As we know already, the great stage manager had not come over-willingly or over-hopefully to Northampton to see Tony Holiday play Rosalind.  Indeed, when it had been first suggested that he do so, he had objected violently and remarked with conviction that he would “be da—­er—­blessed if he would.”  But he had come and he had been blessed involuntarily.