PLANNING THE U. S. C. "SHOW"
IT was becoming more and more evident every day to the president of the
United Service Club that it must have more money than was at its
disposal at the moment or it would not be able to carry out its plans.
Already it owed to Mrs. Morton a sum that Helen knew was larger than her
mother could lend them conveniently. All of Grandfather Emerson's
donation had gone to provide knitting needles and yarn for the occupants
of the Old Ladies' Home, and the Club's decision to lay itself under no
financial obligation to people outside of the immediate families of the
members had obliged her to refuse a few small gifts that had been
offered.
All the members of the Club were working hard to earn money beyond their
allowances and every cent was going into the Club's exchequer. Roger was
faithful in his attention to the three furnaces he had undertaken to
care for, though he was not above a feeling of relief that the weather
was continuing so mild that he had not yet had to keep up fires
continuously in any of them. James still drove his father, though the
doctor threatened him with discharge almost every day because of his
habit of cutting corners. The girls were carrying out their plans for
money-making, and Della had secured another order for stenciled curtains
which Dorothy and Ethel Brown filled.
What with school and working for the orphans and working for the Club
treasury these were busy days, and Helen felt that something must be
done at once to provide a comparatively large sum so that their
indebtedness might be paid off and the pressure upon each one of them
would not be so heavy.
Helen and James were going over the Club accounts one Saturday before
the regular meeting. A frown showed Helen's anxiety and James's square
face looked squarer and more serious than ever as he saw the deficit
piled against them.
"It's high time we gave that entertainment we talked about so much when
we began this thing," he growled. "People will have forgotten all about
it and we'll have to advertise it all over again."
"That'll be easy enough if we make use of some of the small children in
some way. All their relatives near and far will know all about it
promptly and they'll all come to see how the kiddies perform," said
Helen wisely, though her look of perplexity continued.
"Let's bring it up at the meeting right now. I don't believe we can do
anything better this afternoon than plan out our show and decide who and
what and where."
"'Where' is answered easily enough--the hall of the schoolhouse. 'Who'
and 'what' require more thought."
It turned out, however, that every one had been thinking of stunts to do
himself or for some one else to do, so that the program did not take as
much time as if the subject had not been lying in their minds for
several weeks.
"At the beginning," said Ethel Blue, "I think some one ought to get up
and tell what the Club is trying to do--all about the war orphans and
the Santa Claus Ship."
"Wouldn't Grandfather Emerson be a good one to do that?"
"I don't think we want to have any grown people in our show," was
Helen's opinion. "If we bring them in then the outside people will
expect more from us because they'll think that we've been helped and it
won't be fair to us or to our grown-ups."
"That's so," agreed Tom from the depths of a lifetime of experience of
the ways of people in church entertainments. "Let's do every single
thing ourselves if we can, and I believe the audience will like it
better even if it isn't all as O. K. as it would be if we had a grown-up
or two to help pull the oars."
"The first question before us, then, is who will do this explanation act
that Ethel Blue suggests?"
There was a dead silence. No one wanted to offer. There seemed no one
person on whom the task fell naturally unless--"The Club was Ethel
Blue's idea," went on Helen. "Isn't she the right one to explain it?"
and "The president of the Club ought to tell about it," said Ethel Blue.
Both girls spoke at once.
There was unanimous laughter.
"'Ayther is correct,'" quoted Roger. "I think Helen is the proper
victim."
"Yes, indeed," Ethel Blue supported him so earnestly that every one
laughed again.
"You see, no one knows about its being Ethel Blue's idea and that would
take a lot more explaining or else it would seem that there was no good
reason for the president's not acting as showman and introducing her
freaks to the audience."
"'Speak for yourself, John!' I'm no freak!" declared James. "I think
Helen's the right one to make the introduction, though."
Helen shivered.
"I must say I hate to do it," she said, "but we all agreed when we went
into this that we'd do what came up, no matter whether we liked it or
not, so here goes Number 1 on the program," and she wrote on her pad,
beneath an elaborate
PROGRAM
which she had been drawing and decorating as she talked.
1. Explanatory address. Helen Morton.
"Now, then," queried Ethel Brown, "what next?"
"Music, if there's any one to tootle for the ladies," said Roger.
"Dorothy's the singer."
"Oh, I couldn't sing all alone," objected Dorothy shrinkingly. "But
Mother said she'd drill a chorus of children and I wouldn't mind doing
the solo part with a lot of others on the stage with me."
"How about a chorus in costume?" asked Helen.
"What kind of costume?"
"Oh, I don't know--something historical, perhaps."
"Why not the peasant costumes of the countries in the war?" suggested
Ethel Blue. "We're working for the children and we'll have a child or
two from each country."
"A sort of illustration of Helen's speech," said Tom.
"They might sing either the national songs of their countries or
children's songs," said Dorothy.
"Or both, with you dressed as Columbia and singing the Star Spangled
Banner at the end."
"La, la! Fine!" commended Margaret. "Put down Number 2, Helen, 'Songs by
War Orphans.' We can work out the details later, or leave them to
Dorothy and her mother."
"I've been thinking that we might as well utilize some of the folk
dances that we learned at Chautauqua last summer," said Ethel Brown.
"Wouldn't Number 3 be a good spot to put in the Butterfly Dance?"
"That was one of the prettiest dances at the Exhibition," said James.
"Let's have it."
"Margaret and I are too tall for it, but you four young ones know it and
you can teach four more girls easily enough."
"We'll ask them to-morrow at school," said Dorothy, "and we'll have a
rehearsal right off. Mother will play for us and it won't take any time
at all."
"The costumes won't take any time, either. Any white dress will do and
the wings are made by strips of soft stuff--cheese cloth or something
even softer, pale blue and pink and green and yellow. They're fastened
at the shoulders and a loop goes over the wrist or the little finger so
the arms can keep them waving."
"Do you remember the steps, Dorothy?"
"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," pronounced 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 Dicky's brethren.
"Not Dicky," 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 Dicky to be a fairy," decided Ethel Blue so
gravely that all the others laughed.
"I was thinking that it would be fun to have Dicky and some other
children dressed like pussy 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. Pussy 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 scraps of kids," pronounced
Tom. "Who'll train them?"
"I'll do that," offered Ethel Brown. "Dicky'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 rehearse 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."
"Have we got enough numbers on the program, Helen?"
"I think we ought to end with a long thing of some sort."
"We'll never pull off the show if you try to stick in a play," growled
James.
"Not a play, but I was reading Browning's 'Pied Piper of Hamelin' the
other day and it can easily be made workable with just a little speaking
and some pantomime. Two or three rehearsals ought to do it."
"All right, then. Your sufferings be on your head."
"You'll all back me up, won't you?"
"We'll do whatever you tell us, if that's what you want."
"Read us the whole program, Madam President," begged Dorothy.
"Here you are; I've changed the order a little:
PROGRAM
1. Address, Helen Morton.
2. Songs by War Orphans, led by Dorothy Smith.
3. Butterfly Dance.
4. Club Swinging by Roger Morton and Thomas
Watkins.
5. Knitting for the War Orphans by Ladies from the
Old Ladies' Home.
6. Silhouettes by Dicky Morton and other Juniors.
7. Minuet.
8. "The Pied Piper."
"If I do say it as shouldn't, having had a modest part in its
construction," remarked Roger complacently, "that's a good program."
"Do you know," added Margaret earnestly, "I think so too."
So, after discussion of details concerning responsibility and
rehearsals, and the appointment of a publicity committee consisting of
the officers of the Club plus Roger, the meeting adjourned.