April 8, 19--.
Dearest Winnies:
Daggers and dirks! Did I say it was dull out here? Deluded mortal! For
the past week it's been so strenuous that I have seriously considered
moving to Bedlam for a rest. If I'm not gray by the time I'm thirty it'll
be because I'm bald.
As Mistress of Ceremonies your humble servant is a rather watery success.
You know from sad experience my fatal fondness for trying new and
startling experiments and also my genius for leaving the most important
things undone. Remember the time I was Lemonade Committee when we climbed
Windy Hill and I carefully provided water and sugar and spoons and
glasses, and no lemons? And the time I hid the unwashed dishes in the
oven at Aunt Anna's and then went home with Gladys and forgot all about
them, and Aunt Anna nearly had spasms because she thought her silverware
had been stolen? And the time we went to Ellen's Isle and I mislaid the
vital portion of my traveling suit half an hour before the train started
and had to go in a borrowed suit that didn't fit? Every time little
Katherine was given something to do she either forgot to do it
altogether, or else did it in such a way as to make herself ridiculous.
The memory of all those things rose up and oppressed me after I had
undertaken to stage a Patriotic Pageant for the township of Spencer. I
was so afraid I would do something that would turn it into a farce that I
began to have nightmares the minute I sank to weary slumber. It was a
daring idea, this patriotic pageant. Since history began there had never
been a pageant, patriotic or otherwise, in this section. Most of the
folks had never seen a circus, or a show, or a parade; so there was
nobody to give me any help except Justice. I myself would never have
thought of tackling it, but no sooner had my Camp Fire Girls gotten
absorbed in Red Cross work, and been thrilled by reading accounts of what
Camp Fire Girls were doing in other sections, than they begged me to get
up a pageant. I had my misgivings, but, being a Winnebago, I couldn't
back out. A pageant it should be, if it cost my head. (It pretty nearly
did, but not in the way I had feared.)
Justice Sherman hailed the plan with delight.
"Go to it," he encouraged. "I'm with you to the bitter end. I've never
done it before but I'll never begin any younger.
"'There is a tide in the affairs of schoolma'ams,
That, taken at the flood, leads on to Pageants.'
"Lead on MacDuff! Trot out the order of events."
At Justice's suggestion I summed up all the possibilities.
"There isn't much to work with," I said thoughtfully, having counted up
all my assets on the fingers of one hand. "Just ten Camp Fire Girls,
about as many boys, one trick mule, and--you."
"So glad I know, right at the outset, just where I come in," said Justice
politely, "after the mule."
"Sandhelo's got his red, white and blue pompom that the girls sent him
for Christmas," I went on, ignoring Justice's gibe. "We could make red,
white and blue harness for him, too."
"If only he doesn't get temperamental!" said Justice fervently.
"The girls could wear their Red Cross caps and aprons in one part of it,"
I continued, "and flags draped on them when they act out 'The Spirit of
Columbia.' One of the girls can wear her Ceremonial gown and be the
Spirit of Nature that comes to tell the others the secret of the soil
that will help them win the war. Oh, ideas are coming to me faster than
flies to molasses."
"Would you advise me to wear my Ceremonial gown or my Red Cross apron and
cap?" asked Justice soberly. "I could braid my hair in two pig-tails--"
"Oh, Justice!" I interrupted, "if you only had a soldier's uniform!"
Then, as I saw Justice wince and the laughter die out of his eyes, I
stopped abruptly and changed the subject. It was an awfully sore point
with him that he had been rejected for the army.
"We'll have a flag raising, of course, and tableaux," I rushed on. "Would
you put the flag on the schoolhouse, or set up a pole in the ground?"
"I think on the schoolhouse," said Justice, with a return of interest.
"That's where it belongs."
Justice and I held more conferences in the next day or so than the King
and his Prime Minister. Lessons in the little schoolhouse were abandoned
while we drilled and rehearsed for the pageant. Justice and I put
together and bought the flag.
"Who's going to raise it?" asked Justice, shaking the beautiful bright
starry folds out of the package.