Ethel Morton and the Christmas Ship Part 16

"They're very simple, but almost anything that moves sort of swimmingly will do."

"There's Number 3, then," decided Dorothy. "Now the boys ought to appear."

"Yes, what have you three been planning to throw us in the shade?"

inquired Della.

"I've got a fancy club-swinging act that's rather good," admitted Roger modestly.

"You have?" asked Tom in surprise. "So have I. What's yours?"

"Come over here and I'll tell you," and the two boys retired to a corner where they conferred. It was evident, from their burst of laughter and their exclamations that they highly approved of each other's schemes.

"We've decided that we won't tell you what our act is," they declared when they came back to the broken meeting. "We'll surprise you as well as the rest of the audience."

"Meanies," p.r.o.nounced Ethel Brown. "Helen, put down 'Number 4, Club Swinging by Two Geese!'"

"Not geese," corrected Tom, with a glance at Roger, who made a sign of caution.

"What next?" queried the president.

"Let's have some of the small children now. Our honorary member ought to be on the card," said Della.

"Are you sure he wouldn't be afraid?" asked Tom of d.i.c.ky's brethren.

"Not d.i.c.ky," they shrieked in concert.

"I saw a pretty stunt in town the other evening. It was done by grown people but it would be dear with little kids," urged Della, her round face beaming with the joy of her adaptation of the idea. "It was a new kind of shadow dance."

"Pshaw, that's old," declared Tom with brotherly curtness.

"It wasn't done behind a sheet. That's the old way--"

"A mighty good way, too," supported James stoutly. "I've seen some splendid pantomimes done on a sheet--'Red Riding Hood' and 'Jack the Giant Killer,' and a lot more."

"This is much cunninger," insisted Della. "Instead of a sheet there's a dull, light blue curtain hung across the stage. The light is behind it, but the actors are in front of it."

"Then you don't see their shadows."

"You see themselves in silhouette against the blue. There is a net curtain down between them and the audience and it looks like moonlight with elves and fairies playing in it."

"It would be hard to train d.i.c.ky to be a fairy," decided Ethel Blue so gravely that all the others laughed.

"I was thinking that it would be fun to have d.i.c.ky and some other children dressed like p.u.s.s.y cats and rabbits and dogs, and playing about as if they were frisking in the moonlight."

"Why not have them do a regular little play like 'Flossy Fisher's Funnies' that have been coming out in the _Ladies' Home Journal_?"

screamed Ethel Brown, electrified at the growth of the idea. "Take almost any one of them and get the children to play the little story it tells and I don't see why it wouldn't be too cunning for words."

"What kind of stories?" asked James who liked to understand.

"I don't remember any one exactly but they are something like this;--Mr.

Dog goes fishing on the bank of the stream. A strip of pasteboard cut at the top into rushes will give the effect of a brook, you know. He pulls up a fish with a jerk that throws it over his head. p.u.s.s.y Cat is waiting just behind him. She seizes the fish and runs away with it. Mr.

Dog runs after her. The cat jumps over a wheelbarrow, but the dog doesn't see it and gets a fall--and so on."

"I can see how it would be funny with little sc.r.a.ps of kids," p.r.o.nounced Tom. "Who'll train them?"

"I'll do that," offered Ethel Brown. "d.i.c.ky's always good with me and if he understands the story he'll really help teach the others."

"Pick out a simple 'Flossy Fisher' or make up an easy story with plenty of action," advised Margaret. "The chief trouble you'll have is to make the children stay apart on the stage. They'll keep bunching up and spoiling the silhouettes if you aren't careful."

"Number 5. Silhouettes," wrote Helen on her pad. "What's Number 6?"

"I don't know whether you'll approve of this," offered Dorothy rather shyly, "but when I was at the Old Ladies' Home the other day I thought they made a real picture knitting away there in the sunshine in their sitting room. Do you think some of them could be induced to come to the schoolhouse and make a tableau?"

"Fine!" commended Helen.

"You could have it a picture of sentiment, such as Dorothy had in mind, I judge," said Tom, "or you could turn it into a comic by having some one sing 'Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soldiers.'"

"What's that?"

"A stay-at-home war song they're singing in England. It's funny because it's so full of S's that it's almost impossible to sing it without a mistake. I think it would be better, though, to have the old ladies just knitting away. After all, it's sympathy with the orphans we want to arouse."

"Couldn't we have a tableau within a tableau--a picture at the back placed with the figures posed behind a net curtain so that they'd be dimmed--a picture of some of the Belgian orphans refugeeing into Holland or something of that sort?"

"If Mademoiselle would only send us right off that Belgian baby that James got kissed for we'd have an actual exhibit," said Roger.

James made a face at the memory of the unexpected caress he had earned unwittingly, but he approved highly of the addition to the picture of the old ladies.

"They're thinking about the orphans as they knit--and there are the orphans," he said, and even his sister Margaret smiled at the approbation with which he looked on a tableau that left nothing to the imagination.

"Number 6 is settled, then. Why can't we have the minuet for Number 7?"

"Good. All of us here know it so we shan't need to rehea.r.s.e much."

"On that small stage four couples will be plenty, I say," offered Roger.

"I think so, too. Eight would make it altogether too crowded," declared Helen. "That means that four of us girls will dance--we can decide which ones later--and you three boys, and we'll only have to train one new boy."

"What's the matter with George Foster? His sister is a dancing teacher and perhaps he knows it already."

"He's the best choice we can make. We want to get this thing done just as fast as we can for several reasons," continued Helen. "In the first place any entertainment goes off more snappily if the fun of doing it isn't all worn off by too many rehearsals."

"Correct," agreed Tom. "Remember that Children's Symphony we exhausted ourselves on for a month last winter, Della?"

Della did and expressed her memories with closed eyes and out-stretched hands.

"If each one of us makes himself and herself responsible for having his own part perfect and the stunts that he's drilling others in as nearly perfect as he can, then I don't see why we need more than ten days for it."

"Especially as we know all the dances now and the Old Ladies' Home tableau won't take much preparation."