Ethel Morton and the Christmas Ship Part 18

"This old treasury of ours is almost an empty box," he growled. "We can't afford to spend cold cash on printing."

"It will pay in the end, believe me," insisted Tom slangily. "You know there are always a lot of people who think they'll go to a show and then at the last minute think they won't if something more amusing turns up.

If you sell tickets beforehand you've got their contribution to the cause even if they don't appear themselves."

"Tom's right," agreed Margaret. "They won't mind losing so small a sum as a quarter if they don't go."

"And they'd think it was too small an amount to bother themselves about by hunting up the treasurer and paying it in if they didn't have a ticket," said Roger.

"And there are some people who'd be sure to come and swell the audience just because they had spent a quarter on a ticket," said Ethel Brown.

"What does the president think?" asked Ethel Blue.

Helen agreed with Tom and the tickets were printed. After all they came to only a small sum and Roger, peeking through a hole in the curtain, saw with satisfaction that if there were going to be any vacant seats at all they would not be many. When one of the old ladies turned about just before the curtain went up she saw a solid room behind her and people standing against the wall.

There was music before the curtain rose. This enrichment of the program was a surprise to the performers themselves. Young Doctor Edward Watkins had become so interested in the United Service Club when he met them at the French Line Pier that he had insisted on helping with their work for the orphans.

"If Mademoiselle really sends you that Belgian baby you may need a special physician for it," he said. "So you'd better stand in with one whose practice isn't big enough yet to take all his time."

He said this to Helen when he appeared with Tom and Della on the evening of the performance and announced that not only did he know his part in the "Piper" but he had brought his violin and would be glad to be a part of the orchestra.

"But we haven't an orchestra," objected Helen. "I wish we had."

"Who's going to play for the dances?"

"Aunt Louise."

"Why can't she and I do something at the beginning? It will seem a little less cold than just having the curtain go up without any preliminaries."

Mrs. Smith proved to be delighted to go over with Doctor Watkins the music he had brought and they selected one or two lively bits that would set the mood of the audience for the evening. So Mrs. Morton and the Emersons and the younger members of the cast were greatly surprised to hear an overture from a well-played violin accompanied by the piano.

While the applause was dying away the curtain rose on Helen seated at a desk reading from a blank exercise book filled with Ethel Blue's neat writing.

"This is the report of the Secretary of the United Service Club," began Helen when the applause that greeted her appearance had subsided. She was looking very pretty, wearing a straight, plain pink frock and having her hair bound with a narrow pink fillet.

"Perhaps you don't know what the United Service Club is," she went on, and then she told in the simplest manner of the beginning of the Club at Chautauqua the summer before.

"What we're trying to do is to help other people whether we want to or not," she declared earnestly.

A soft laugh went over the audience at this contradictory statement.

"I mean," continued Helen, somewhat confused, "that we mean to do things that will help people even if we don't get any fun out of it ourselves.

We want to improve our characters, you see," she added artlessly. "So far we haven't had much chance to improve our characters because all the things that have come our way to do have been things that were great fun--like to-night.

"To-night," she went on earnestly, "you have come here to see a little entertainment that we've gotten up to make some money so that we could send a bigger bundle to the Christmas s.h.i.+p that is going to sail for Europe early in November. We thought we could make a good many presents for the war orphans but we found that our allowances didn't go as far as we thought they would, although we have a very careful treasurer," she added with a smiling glance at the wings of the stage where James greeted her compliment with a wry face.

"We made a rule that we would make all the money we needed and not accept presents, so this show is the result, and we hope you'll like it.

Anyway, we've had lots of fun getting it up."

She bowed her thanks to the applause that greeted her girlish explanation and stepped behind the scenes.

Immediately a gay march sounded from the piano. It was a medley of well-known national songs and in time with its notes a group of children led by Dorothy ran upon the stage. Dorothy stepped to the front and sang a few lines of introduction to the tune of "Yankee Doodle."

"Here we are from Fatherland, From Russia and from France, From j.a.pan and from Ireland We all together dance.

"At home they are not dancing now; There's war and awful slaughter; We here in Rosemont make our bow, Each one Columbia's daughter."

Then a flaxen-haired little girl stepped forward and sang a German folk song and after it she and two other children dressed in German peasant costume danced a merry folk dance. Representatives of the other countries which Dorothy's verses had named sang in turn. Then each group sang its national song, at the end uniting in "The Star Spangled Banner," in which the standing audience joined.

There was a great clapping when the curtain fell, but the managers had decided that there should be no encores, so the curtain merely rose once upon a bowing, smiling group and then fell with a decision that was understood to be final.

"Whatever we do wrong, the thing we must do right," Helen had insisted when she was drilling her performers, "is to have promptness in putting on our 'acts.'"

"That's so," agreed Tom, "there's nothing an audience hates more than to wait everlastingly between 'turns' while whispering and giggling goes on behind the scenes."

As a result of Helen's sternness the b.u.t.terflies were waiting when the little internationals went off, and, as those of the children who were not to appear again filed quietly down into the audience where they could see the remainder of the performance, waving wings of soft pink and blue and green and yellow fluttered in from the sides. There was nothing intricate about the steps of this pretty dance. There were movements forward and back and to one side and another, with an occasional turn, but the slowly waving hands with their delicate burden of color made the whole effect entirely charming.

When Tom and Roger, jersey clad, stepped on to the stage for the club-swinging act all the other performers were cl.u.s.tered in the wings, for it had roused their curiosity. Evidently Roger was to swing first for he stepped to the front while Tom beckoned to the janitor of the hall who came forward and attached electric light wires to a plug in the edge of the platform. Tom made a connection with wires that ran up under the back of Roger's jersey and down his sleeves and through holes bored into his clubs, and then he stepped forward to the front.

"While Roger Morton is swinging his clubs the lights of the hall will be turned off," he explained. "I mention it so that no one will be startled when they go out."

Out they went, and in a flash Roger's clubs, made of red and white striped cotton stretched over wire frames which covered electric light bulbs screwed to a sawed-off pair of clubs, were illuminated from within. The beauty of the movements as the clubs flashed here and there in simple or elaborate curves and whirls drew exclamations of enjoyment from the audience.

"That's one of the prettiest stunts I ever saw," exclaimed Doctor Hanc.o.c.k, and Doctor Watkins led the vigorous applause that begged Roger to go on. True to his agreement with Helen, however, Roger stepped aside as soon as he was freed from his apparatus and the lights were turned on once more in the hall, and prepared to help Tom.

It was clear that Tom, too, was not going to do ordinary club-swinging.

He took up his position in the centre of the stage and Roger brought forward a box which he deposited beside him. The actors behind the scenes craned their heads forward until they were visible to the audience, so eager were they to see what the box contained.

"My friend, Tom Watkins," said Roger gravely, "is something of a naturalist. In the course of his travels and studies he has come across a curious animal whose chief characteristic is what I may be permitted to call its adhesive power. So closely does it cling to anything to which it attaches itself that it can be detached only with great difficulty. So marked is this peculiarity of the _Canis Taurus_--"

A peculiar grunt of amus.e.m.e.nt from certain high school members of the audience interrupted Roger's oration. "_Canis_, dog; _taurus_, bull,"

they whispered.

"--of the _Canis Taurus_," he went on, "that Watkins has been able to train two of his specimens to do the very remarkable act that you are about to see."

As he ended he threw back the top of the box and there popped up over the edge the infinitely ugly heads of Cupid's two pup's, Amor and Amorette. A howl of laughter greeted their silly, solemn countenances.

Tom whistled sharply and they sprang from their narrow quarters and ran to him. He stroked them, and faced them toward the footlights so that their eyes should not be dazzled by seeing them suddenly. Then he began to play with them, pus.h.i.+ng them about and shoving them gently with the ravelled ends of two short pieces of knotted rope. When he had teased them for a minute he stood upright and Amor and Amorette were hanging each from a rope! It was a trick he had taught them as soon as their teeth were strong enough.

Slowly he swung them back and forth, and then in semi-circles constantly increasing in sweep, until in a flash they rose over his head and described regular simple Indian club evolutions. Every move was slow and steady with no jerks that would break the dogs' hold and Amor and Amorette held on with a firmness that did credit to their inheritance of jaw muscle and determination.

"Good for the _Canis Taurus_," laughed Mr. Wheeler, the high school teacher, from the back of the hall as the swinging died rhythmically away.

"Speak to the ladies and gentlemen," commanded Tom as he dropped the ropes and their attachments to the floor. Each dog was still holding firmly to his bit of rope and manifested no desire to part from it. At their master's order, however, they let go of their handles and uttered two sharp barks. Then they picked them up again and trotted off the stage.

All this was so unusual that it aroused the most fervent enthusiasm that had yet been shown. Feet stamped and canes rapped but Tom would do no more than walk on with a dog on each side of him and bow as they barked.

With the announcement of the knitting tableau there was a flutter among the old ladies from the Home. Here was an act in which they felt a personal interest. It was almost embarra.s.sing to be so nearly related to a number on the program!

The curtain rose very slowly to soft music thrilling through the hall.

It was a homely scene--just such a room as any one of the old ladies may have had when she still had a home of her own. There was a table with a lamp upon it and around the table were the three old ladies, one with her crutch and one in her wheel chair, and one sitting in the darkness that was daylight to her--the s.h.i.+ning of a contented heart. All of them were knitting.