Page:Red Rugs of Tarsus.djvu/114

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THE RED RUGS OF TARSUS

Papacy, and gave it afterwards as answer to a question in term examination. Their patience and endurance are limitless. They never get bored.

Jeanne and I were back of the scenes on the great night to start the play with everybody dressed and bewigged, painted and securely hitched together. Clothes had to be sewed on the ladies. The boys entered so fully into the spirit of the thing that when the show was actually on, they had n't time to think about their clothes. My red Cretan rug, firmly strapped to the shoulders of Hamlet's mother, made a real court train. (The actors had practised not to walk on it. Luckily they learned this early in the rehearsals, when Ophelia, passing his future mother-in-law, stepped on the Cretan rug and "sat down too much" on the hard schoolroom floor.) Crowns and wigs had to be anchored with adhesive tape. Ophelia, young and rather slender for his age, was capable of the martyrdom of forcing his feet into my satin

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