"THE RAINMAKER" by Richard Nash

LIZZIE: What did I do in Sweetriver. Well, the first three or four days I was there -- I stayed in my room most of the time. Because I was embarrassed!

I knew what I was there for -- and the whole family knew it too. And I couldn't stand the way they were looking me over. So I'd go downstairs for my meals -- and rush right back to my room. I packed -- I unpacked -- I washed my hair a dozen times -- I read the Sears, Roebuck catalog from cover to cover. And finally I said to myself: "Lizzie Curry, snap out of this!" Well, it was a Saturday night -- and they were all going to a rodeo dance. So I got myself all dolled out in my highest heels and my lowest cut dress. And I walked down to that supper table and those boys looked at me as if I was stark naked. And then for the longest while there wasn't a sound at the table except for Uncle Ned slurping his soup. And then suddenly -- like a gunshot -- I heard Ned Junior say: "Lizzie, how much do you weigh?"

I said, "I weigh a hundred and nineteen pounds, my teeth are all my own and I stand seventeen hands high."

He was just trying to open the conversation. Well, I guess I closed... then, about ten minutes later little Peter came hurrying in to the supper table. He was carrying a geography book and he said: "Hey, Pop -- where's Madagascar?" Well, everybody ventured an opinion and they were all dead wrong. And suddenly I felt I had to make a good impression and I heard my own voice talking as if it didn't belong to me. I said: "It's an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa right opposite Mozambique." Can I help it if I was good in geography?

Everything was so quiet it sounded like the end of the world. Then I heard Ned Junior's voice: "Lizzie, you fixin' to be a schoolmarm?" And suddenly I felt like I was way back at the high school dance -- and nobody dancing with me. And I had a sick feeling that I was wearing eyeglasses again the way I used to. And I knew from that minute on that it was no go. So I didn't go to the rodeo dance with them -- I stayed home and made up poems about what was on sale at Sears, Roebuck. And the day I left Sweetriver little Peter was bawling. And he said: "You're the most beautifulest girl that ever was!"

"THE LARK" by Jean Anouilh

JOAN: I like remembering the beginning: at home, in the fields, when I was a little girl looking after the sheep, the first time I heard the Voices, that is what I like to remember -- It is after the evening Angelus. I am very small and my hair is still in pigtails. I am sitting in the field, thinking of nothing at all. God is good and keeps me safe and happy, close to my mother and father and my brother, in the quiet countryside of Domremy, while the English soldiers are looting and burning villages up and down the land. My big sheep-dog is lying with his head in my lap; and suddenly I feel his body ripple and tremble, and a hand seems to have touched my shoulder.

I turned to look. A great light was filling the shadows behind me. The voice was gentle and grave. I had never heard it before, and all it said to me was: "Be a good and sensible child and go often to church." But I was good, and I did go to church often, and I showed I was sensible by running away to safety. That was all that happened the first time. And I didn't say anything about it when I got home; but after supper I went back. The moon was rising; it shone on the white sheep; and that was all the light there was. And then came the second time; the bells were ringing for the noonday Angelus. The light came again, in bright sunlight, but brighter than the sun, and that time I saw him.

A man in a white robe, with two white wings reaching from the sky to the ground. He didn't tell me his name that day, but later on I found out that he was the blessed St. Michael.