When, after a month of labor, as many as nine-elevenths of the cast were often present at a rehearsal; when most of them had learned their parts and some of them spoke like human beings, Carol had a new shock in the realization that Guy Pollock and herself were very bad actors, and that Raymie Wutherspoon was a surprisingly good one.  For all her visions she could not control her voice, and she was bored by the fiftieth repetition of her few lines as maid.  Guy pulled his soft mustache, looked self-conscious, and turned Mr. Grimm into a limp dummy.  But Raymie, as the villain, had no repressions.  The tilt of his head was full of character; his drawl was admirably vicious.

There was an evening when Carol hoped she was going to make a play; a rehearsal during which Guy stopped looking abashed.

From that evening the play declined.

They were weary.  “We know our parts well enough now; what’s the use of getting sick of them?” they complained.  They began to skylark; to play with the sacred lights; to giggle when Carol was trying to make the sentimental Myrtle Cass into a humorous office-boy; to act everything but “The Girl from Kankakee.”  After loafing through his proper part Dr. Terry Gould had great applause for his burlesque of “Hamlet.”  Even Raymie lost his simple faith, and tried to show that he could do a vaudeville shuffle.

Carol turned on the company.  “See here, I want this nonsense to stop.  We’ve simply got to get down to work.”

Juanita Haydock led the mutiny:  “Look here, Carol, don’t be so bossy.  After all, we’re doing this play principally for the fun of it, and if we have fun out of a lot of monkey-shines, why then——­”

“Ye-es,” feebly.

“You said one time that folks in G. P. didn’t get enough fun out of life.  And now we are having a circus, you want us to stop!”

Carol answered slowly:  “I wonder if I can explain what I mean?  It’s the difference between looking at the comic page and looking at Manet.  I want fun out of this, of course.  Only——­I don’t think it would be less fun, but more, to produce as perfect a play as we can.”  She was curiously exalted; her voice was strained; she stared not at the company but at the grotesques scrawled on the backs of wing-pieces by forgotten stage-hands.  “I wonder if you can understand the ‘fun’ of making a beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness!”

The company glanced doubtfully at one another.  In Gopher Prairie it is not good form to be holy except at a church, between ten-thirty and twelve on Sunday.

“But if we want to do it, we’ve got to work; we must have self-discipline.”

They were at once amused and embarrassed.  They did not want to affront this mad woman.  They backed off and tried to rehearse.  Carol did not hear Juanita, in front, protesting to Maud Dyer, “If she calls it fun and holiness to sweat over her darned old play—­well, I don’t!”