Then something the director had said at the rehearsal flashed across the
confusion. "She makes her own part," he had said of Flossy Pierson, and
Nance, with grim determination, decided to do the same. A fat man in the
left hand box had laughed out when she discovered the spotlight. She
determined to make him laugh again. Simulating the dismay that at first
was genuine, she began to play tag with the shaft of light, dodging it,
jumping over it, hiding from it behind the stump, leading it a merry
chase from corner to corner. The fat man grew hysterical. The audience
laughed at him, and then it began to laugh at Nance. She threw herself
into the frolic with the same mad abandonment with which she used to
dance to the hand-organ in front of Slap Jack's saloon. She cut as many
fantastic capers as a frisky kitten playing in the twilight; she leapt
and rolled and romped, and the spectators, quick to feel the contagion of
something new and young and joyful, woke up for the first time during the
evening, and followed her pranks with round after round of applause.
When at last the music ceased, she scampered into the wings and sank
gasping and laughing into a chair.
"They want you back!" cried Reeser, excitedly beckoning to her. "Go on
again. Take the call."
"The what?" said Nance, bewildered. But before she could find out, she
was thrust forward and, not being able to see where she was going, she
tripped and fell sprawling upon the very scene of her recent triumph.
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