Read The Grub-And-Stakers Pinch a Poke for Free Online Page B

willing but eager to direct his play the way it ought to be directed. But he was dadblanged if he was going to act in it, and who could blame him?
    Anyway, he couldn’t possibly look dangerous enough to be Dan McGrew, and he just wasn’t the type to be a head feedbag man, much less a gold miner. Besides, there were enough members of the Monk family in the cast already.
    Ethel was to be the faithful dog, needless to say, since the role had been written for her and nobody else’s dog wanted to do it anyway.
    Dittany, inevitably, would be Evangeline.
    “But I don’t want to be Evangeline,” she wailed when she got hit with the casting committee’s verdict. “I’m too old to be a tiny tot.
    I’m a grown woman with a husband and a dog, for Pete’s sake.”
    “Dittany, the show must go on,” pleaded Desdemona Portley.
    “You’ve got to play the tiny tot. Your mother would play the tiny tot if she were here.”
    That was no argument. Dittany knew perfectly well, and Desdemona Portley ought to know she knew, that the former Mrs. Henbit would also have played Dan McGrew, the miner, and the man who wouldn’t give the horsecar horses any carrots if she’d been given the chance.
    “You’re not a bit too old,” Desdemona insisted. “I’ve still got your old baby-blond wig with the corkscrew curls. With that and a big pink hair ribbon, you could easily pass for ten years old. Twelve, anyway. Evangeline can’t be all that tiny a tot, eh, if she winds up tickling the ivories in the Malamute saloon. Besides, we have nobody else in the company who can look winsome while playing ragtime without a music book.”
    “Why shouldn’t Evangeline have a music book?” Dittany demanded.
    “Nobody carried a music book to the Yukon during the gold rush.
    For goodness’ sake, Dittany, even if we let the piano player use a music book she’d still have to act Evangeline convincingly, and that narrows it right down to you. You’ve played more tiny tots than anybody else in Lobelia Falls, you know all the old songs your grandmother taught you, and I never thought I’d live to see the day when a Henbit would let a personal whim stand in the way of her civic duty.”
    “Well, you’re seeing one now,” Dittany grumbled.
    But she gave in, of course. Osbert’s debut as a dramatic writer and director couldn’t be allowed to fall flat for lack of a kid to handle the music box. But Dittany would be dadblanged if Desdemona Portley was going to stick her with another big pink hair ribbon. She’d wear a sober, matronly blue this time even if she could pass for twelve in her old baby-blond wig.
    Desdemona herself would fain have played the lady who came so regrettably to be known as Lou. Even in the former Mrs. Henbit’s day, however, Dessie Portley had got cast as the heroine’s dear old mother just as inevitably as Dittany had been dragooned into portraying the corkscrew-curled infant daughter. Trouper that she was, Desdemona put on a brave smile and accepted the unsympathetic role of landlady. Zilla Trott didn’t want it anyway; she was learning to make her own tofu and the effort was taking a lot out of her.
    As for Louisa, there was really no contest. All the former heroines of the Traveling Thespians had been snapped up by other companies or graduated, like Desdemona, to character parts. Only one member of the Grub-and-Stakers had the looks, the carriage, the dramatic intensity, and the black lace Merry Widow corset to essay the leading lady. Even Osbert had to admit Arethusa Monk would be a smash hit as the miner’s illfated wife.
    Casting Arethusa in the female lead brought a fringe benefit nobody could have anticipated. A.S a lawyer, Carolus Bledsoe must perforce have had a streak of the thespian in him already. Impressive in appearance, affable in manner, he was the very type to have experienced a meteoric rise from lowly groom to head feedbag man at the horsecar barns. As soon as Arethusa happened to mention that the role