magnolia-buildings

The school orchestra began to play a merry tune, and if all the instruments did not finish the tune at absolutely the same second, who cared? * It was a wonder that the school had an orchestra at ail. The curtain suddenly went up and a wave of hot air blew across the cool stage. The Ugly Sisters appeared. They were walking about with a proud air looking awfully funny in their comic petticoats and pants, while poor little Cinderella was trying to dress them for the ball.

Even from behind the chimney Ally could see that the panto was going well. Something had happened to everyone, excitement had gone to their heads,2 and was making them act and sing and dance as they had never done before. The audience was laughing nicely.3 Listening to all this, Ally turned from a Good to a Bad Fairy. She ought to be on the stage singing Cinderella's song instead of hiding above the chimney.

Now the Ugly Sisters were dressed at last, in spite of all the strange things that had happened to their clothes while they were trying to put them on. They were dancing off to the ball * followed by the Wicked Stepmother. Cinderella was left alone in her rags, to sing her sad song in the ashes.

I cannot go to the Ball. Sisters and Mamma and all Will polka and lancer,!! And have lots of fun.

I shall sit here

And just eat a dry bun.

I shall not dance with a handsome young feller • But stay in the ashes and be Cinderella.

Oh, I do want to go to the Ball!

This was the Good Fairy's cue.7 Ally gathered herself up, broomstick and all.8 When the big flash and explo-

sion came, she was down the chimney and standing on the stage in her spotlight.

The excitement that had got into the other actorsx had got into Ally too, only more so. Ally was a natural actress. She had a vivid imagination and was never shy.

In her disappointment she almost did not act during, the rehearsals, only doing the minimum of work, but tonight it was quite another thing. She would show them! She would make the audience forget that silly little Cinderella!

Ally just gave that Good Fairy all she had.2 If the panto had been going quite well before, it now went with a bang.3 She overacted it, she caricatured all the Good Fairies there had ever been, she played the fool,4 she made the audience die of laughter because she just did not care.8 And because she did not care, she could do anything she liked with the audience. Poor little Cinderella was so amazed that she could hardly say her words, and anyhow the audience was laughing so much at Ally's tricks that they could not concentrate their attention on Cinderella at all.

Miss Fleetwood caught Ally between scenes6 and implored her to behave. Mr Browne scolded her, but it was no good,7 for that night she had gone mad and did not care. "It serves them right," 8 she said to herself,

"they should have given me a proper part and this wouldn't have happened." Besides the audience liked her. All the parents who had come to see the show from a sense of duty were enjoying themselves as much as if they were at Drury Lane.1

Ally sang her song that was full of good wishes for Cinderella in such a way that it sounded like mockery. When she sang that she hoped the girl would get her prince, the audience knew that the prince was a clown and no good to any girl.

When Mr Browne played a tune on the piano in the interval, he put into it all the rage he felt against Ally Berners. But nobody could stop her because she certainly had the audience on her side. The headmaster could hear people asking each other, "Who is the Good Fairy? Isn't she wonderful?"

In the interval, Cinderella and the Prince attacked Ally. "What do you think you're doing?" they cried. "You never give us our proper cues! And stop playing up those silly tricks, riding round the stage on your broomstick. You've never done that before. We didn't know when to come in."

But Ally paid no attention and just went on to the stage with a mocking laugh.

During the second part of the panto she behaved in the same way. At the Court Ball, she frightened the Court ladies so that they forgot their dance. By the time the show came to an end, and Ally had to make her last speech in front of the curtain, the audience was standing and yelling for her.2 Never had there been such a school pantol Behind the scenes,3 Mr Browne and Miss Fleetwood were biting their nails and wishing they could give her a good thrashing.

Mum and Len were quite amazed at Ally's success and nearly clapped their hands off.* They, like the rest of the

audience, had no idea that she had killed the show.1 The other actors themselves were waiting in a rage behind the scenes, and there would have been a fight if the teachers had not stepped in.

"Ally, come into my study a minute," said Mr Browne. "You have gone a bit too far." 2

"I don't care," said Ally with shining eyes and the freedom of a pupil who has only one more day of school life. "I ought to have had the principal part. Anyhow, I made the show.3 You can't say I didn't, sir. Listen to them now."

This was absolutely true, because the audience was still clapping and yelling tor the Good Fairy.

"I think perhaps I should go out and take another curtain,4 sir?" And she was off.

"If you don't promise to behave properly tomorrow night, I'll give your part to somebody else," Mr Browne called after her.

"You can't," said naughty Ally, quite drunk with success. "They'll all come to see me."

Ally was very excited and happy all the way home, even though her friend Lou was worried and told her, "You'll be very sorry about it tomorrow."

"Why should I?" 5 said Ally carelessly. "I showed them I could act."

"Mr Browne'll give you a bad leaving report," 8 said Lou, "and it'll be hard for you to get a good job."

"I don't care!" cried Ally, because she knew that she would go on the stage.7 The great West End producers8 would not bother to read a schoolmaster's report.

Chapter XX

FAME AND AFTERWARDS1

Oddly enough,2 there had been, by chance, a reporter in the audience, one of the reporters of the South London press 3 who had a small girl at the school. He had come to see the panto only because his daughter was a fairy. He had expected to be bored for two hours, while children stumbled over half-for gotten lines. But instead of this he had greatly enjoyed the panto because of Ally. He had been absolutely charmed by her acting.

"That girl is a real find," 4 he said excitedly to his wife on the way home. "She's got imagination and personality. This is very rare. Few people have it. That's a girl who should go on the stage. I'd like some producer to see her.8 She's awfully pretty too. I've never seen such

it was printed by most of the South London papers. Everyone round the Common read that Ally was a talented young actress.

As soon as Mum came back from work next day, Mrs Doherty and other neighbours came running in with their papers.

"Dear me," said Mum when she read the article. "Just think of it! All this is written about our Ally!"

"He says she should be in the West End theatres," cried Mrs Doherty. "Or on T. V. Wouldn't it be lovely ir she were on T. V. and we could watch her! We all that knew her from the cradle! That'd be a pride for you, Mrs Berners, dear."

Ally, who, when she calmed down, had begun to feel that she was perhaps a bit wrong, was now almost beside herself with delight.6 So, after all,7 she was right. The

reporter wrote that she had made the show, and what could the teachers and the children say against it? The house would certainly be packed tonight. Perhaps Mr Browne would even run the show * for the third time. Ally's vivid imagination was off at once.2 She saw other people, important people, reading the paper. She saw some great West End producers arriving in Rolls Royces to offer her engagements at enormous salaries. She saw herself in a mink coat, just leaving for Hollywood by plane. "Miss Gloria Berners when asked about her plans said, 'I really do not know at present what I shall decide to do. I feel that perhaps I should not refuse 3 the Paris T. V.'s offer.'"

But not everyone was pleased. Some of the children had gone home in a rage and told everybody how Ally had behaved. The parents of those actors were very angry. Cinderella's father even spoke to Ally's Dad when they met in the yard. "Your girl spoiled everything for my Ann last night," he said.

"Did you see the papers this morning?" asked Dad triumphantly. "They say our Glory made the show."

"That may be," said the other father, "but at other people's expense,4 if you ask me." s

"Well, I don't ask you," said Dad. And that was the end of the talk.

There were no ordinary lessons on the day of the second show of "Cinderella", and Ally did not want to go to the dressing room too early. She was a bit afraid of everybody there. But the children were not so angry as she had feared: They too had read the papers. If the papers said Ally was so good, then she must be.6

Mr Browne and Miss Fleetwood were still very angry, but they dared not make a big fuss,7 because they had to spare the actors' nerves before the show. They could speak

to Ally afterwards. Anyhow it was Ally who had made the show and now all the tickets had been sold out.

When Ally went to her place above the big chimney she felt strange.* She still wanted to do her best2 and to be the star of the show but she did not want to do it at the expense of the other actors. She had always been popular among the pupils 3 and she did not want to lose that popularity. Also yesterday's mad excitement and anger had passed, so she really did not know how she should play her part that night.

As a result the whole of the show went wrong.4 The other actors were now waiting and ready for Ally's tricks.

So they were just standing by and letting her do what she liked. Ally herself tried to be funny, but what had been created by excitement and anger could not be reproduced in cold blood.6 One must be a professional6 to reproduce the same feelings night after night. Together with her anger and excitement Ally had lost all her charm because she was not sure she was doing the right thing. The audience somehow felt it and did not laugh as they had' laughed the night before. Most of them had come expecting to see something wonderful, but very soon they got disappointed and their disappointment went straight back to the actors, who began to play still worse.

In the second act, Ally tried again to do her wild ride on the broomstick round the stage, but this time she somehow stumbled over the broomstick and fell down heavily. While falling she hurt her right arm and gave a loud cry of pain.7

She tried to get up but found she could not. The pain was too sharp, and she screamed again.

The audience began to get up and shout out advice.

Miss Fleetwood rang down the curtain,1 and Ally was carried into the headmaster's study. In two different ways on both days, she had managed to kill the show.

Ally was crying with pain. "Oh, it hurts,2 it hurts," she sobbed, for the pain on top of the nervous strain 3 was too much for her.

"I think she must have dislocated her shoulder, A dislocation often hurts much more than a break," said Mr Browne, looking very worried. "I'll ring for the ambulance. We must get her to the hospital and have her arm X-rayed 4 at once. Miss Fleetwood, send someone for her mother."

The ambulance arrived before Mum, because Mum had had to quiet the family first and change her clothes. The men put Ally, who was still in her fairy dress, carefully into the ambulance; but still her arm hurt terribly. At the hospital she was carried first to the X-ray room,5 where they discovered it was a bad dislocation, and then she was taken to the theatre.6 A prick in the arm put her to sleep,7 and when she woke up again, she was in hpd in the Women's Ward and her dislocation had been reduced.8 But oh, how it still hurt!

She was allowed to go home in a few days, and her arm soon mended, but she had to go to the hospital and have massage e during all of her Christmas holidays.

"Well," said Mum after Christmas, when Ally's arm was all right again. "It doesn't look as though Hollywood's going to make you an offer.10 I'm going to ask if they'll take you at the ladies' hairdressing saloon. I heard they wanted an apprentice there. So if it's glamour you want, my girl, you'll get it. You'll like the job, and besides

you'll see a bit of life there too. But don't you come home' with your hair dyed pink or some such nonsense, or Dad'll skin you, you may be sure of it. And none of your tricks there, either."2

Ally dared not say that she wanted to go on the stage. After that terrible night, she was afraid that everybody would laugh at her. Luckily, Mr Browne, thinking that the girl had been punished enough, had spared her in his

so Ally went off to her work with a light heart. She had always liked to do her own hair, and she thought it would be fun to experiment with other people's.

After a few weeks at the hairdressing saloon Ally changed out of all recognition.1 She now looked quite neat and elegant, had properly manicured nails and expertly cut hair.2 She also brought home such a lot of stories she had heard from the customers that Mum could listen to her for hours.

"Do you know what?" Ally came running into the flat one evening in March. "I saw Mr Collins today, he's the manager, you know, and he says if I go on as I'm going,3 he'll put me into the West End branch. It's my hair.4 He thinks it will attract the customers. Oh, Mum! The West End!"

"There," 5 cried Mum, looking with delight at her pretty daughter. "I believe you kids are going to turn out all

wants to be a sailor and now you're getting to the West End. Why, Ally, you may meet a Duke or someone grand,' and get married and be a great lady!"

"What, me!" 8 cried Ally laughing. "No, I don't like dukes." But her eyes were shining and she looked as though she half believed 9 her mother's words.