Behold Fairyland!
Well, at least an excellent imitation of what Fairyland must look like.
Overhead, a clear, star-sprinkled sky; below, scores of gaily-hued
lanterns shedding their soft glow over a charming scene. Through the
side gate, please, on School Park. Twenty-five cents to the boy on duty
there, and you are inside, with the manifold attractions awaiting you.
On three sides of the transformed garden are the college booths, each
decked with bunting and flags of appropriate colors, and each presided
over by a patriotically attired young lady who will gladly, nay,
eagerly, sell you almost anything from a cake of soap (“Donated by the
Town Square Pharmacy, H. J. Congreve, Prop’r.”) to a knitted sweater or
a gingham house-dress (“Compliments of The New York Store, High Class
Dry Goods”). Near at hand, Yale is represented by Miss Polly Deane,
capped and aproned in blue, her eyes sparkling and her voice sweetly
insistent: “Won’t you buy something, please, sir? Post-cards, two for
five! These pictures are only fifty cents, all beautifully framed and
ready for hanging! Can I sell you something, ma’am?”
Beyond, gay with orange and black, is the Princeton booth; and still
beyond, Dartmouth and Columbia and California; and then, a blur of
brilliant crimson through the leafage, Harvard. And so on all around the
garden, with merry voices sounding above the chatter of the throng that
moves here and there. Down the center of Fairyland runs a leafy tunnel
from within which blue and red and yellow and green rays twinkle. There,
under the hanging lanterns, little tables and chairs are dotted on the
gravel, and half a dozen aproned youths are busy bearing, not always
without mishap, plates of salad and rolls and dishes of ice-cream and
cake. Close to the back of the house is a platform illumined by a row of
electric lights, the one glaring spot in the area of soft radiance.
“How’s it going?” asked a heavily-built youth of a slimmer one who had
paused at the entrance to the arbor.
“Hello, Kewpie! Oh, bully, so far. We took in eighty-four dollars this
afternoon, and we’ll do at least twice as well to-night. They’re still
coming. Have you seen Whipple anywhere?”
“Yes, a minute ago, down at the Pennsylvania booth. She’s a mighty
pretty girl, too, Nod. I bought a pocket-knife of her for a quarter, and
got stung; but I don’t mind. I’m going back to get another pretty soon.
When do I have to sing again?”
“You follow Wilson’s clog-dance. We’re switching you and Cheesman,
Kewpie. His stuff is corking, but it’s pretty high-brow, and we thought
you’d better bring up the end and make the audience feel cheerful.”
“All right; but it won’t feel very cheerful if those orchestra guys
don’t do better than they did this afternoon. They were four or five
notes behind me once! Nid said you had a new stunt this
evening—something you left out this afternoon.”
“Yes; we couldn’t work it in daylight very well. It ought to go fine
to-night, though.”
“What is it?”
“You wait and see. I’ve got to find Whipple. Say, if you see Ned, tell
him I’ll be at the platform in five minutes and want him to meet me
there. Everybody keeps getting lost here!”
On the way past the arbor, Laurie ran into George Watson, returning
across lots balancing a couple of plates in one hand and holding a large
slab of cake in the other, from which he nibbled as he went. “Hello!” he
said, none too distinctly. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Wanted to bring me refreshments, I suppose.”
George looked at the empty plates, laughed, and shook his head. “Not
exactly. I’ve been feeding Cornell. Somebody ought to take eats to those
girls, Nod; they’re starving!”
“All right; you do it.”
“What do you think I am? A millionaire? I bought Mae a salad and an
ice-cream, and I’m about broke. Lend me a half, will you? Thanks. Want
an ice-cream? I’ll treat.”
“No, thanks. Have you seen Dan Whipple?”
“Sure! He’s over at the Pennsylvania booth, buying it out! Say,
everything’s going great, isn’t it? Couldn’t have had a finer evening,
either, what? Well, see you later. I’m hungry!” And George continued his
way to the house, where Miss Tabitha, surrounded by willing and hungry
helpers, presided sternly, but most capably, over the refreshments.
At eight o’clock the boy on duty at the entrance estimated the
attendance as close to two hundred, which, added to the eighty-six paid
admissions before supper, brought the total close to the first estimate
of three hundred. It is safe to say that every Hillman’s boy attended
the fête either in the afternoon or evening, and that most of the
faculty came and brought Mrs. Faculty—when there was a Mrs. Faculty.
Doctor Hillman was spied by Laurie purchasing a particularly useless and
unlovely article in burnt wood from the auburn-haired Miss Hatch. Every
one seemed to be having a good time, and the only fly in the ointment of
the committee was the likelihood that the refreshments would be
exhausted far too soon.
The Weather Man had kindly provided an evening of exceptional warmth,
with scarcely enough breeze to sway the paper lanterns that glowed from
end to end of the old garden, an evening so warm that ice-cream was more
in demand than sandwiches or salad; and fortunately so, since ice-cream
was the one article of refreshment that could be and was replenished.
If, said Ned, folks would stick to ice-cream and go light on the other
refreshments, they might get through. To which Laurie agreed, and Ned
hied him to the telephone and ordered another freezer sent up.
At a few minutes after eight the Banjo and Mandolin Club took possession
of the chairs behind the platform and dashed into a military march.
Following that, six picked members of the Gymnastic Club did some very
clever work, and Cheesman, a tall and rather soulful-looking upper
middler, sang two ballads very well indeed, and then, as an encore,
quite took the joy out of life with “Suwanee River”! Little Miss
Comfort, present through the courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements,
sniffled quite audibly, but was heard to declare that “it was just too
sweet for anything!” A rather embarrassed junior attempted some card
tricks that didn’t go very well, and then Wilson, garbed more or less in
the character of an Irish gentleman returning from Donnybrook Fair, and
swinging a shillaly, did some jig-dancing that was really clever and won
much applause.
There was a brief unofficial intermission while three anxious committee
members made search for Kewpie Proudtree. He was presently discovered
consuming his fourth plate of ice-cream in the seclusion of the side
porch, and was haled away, protesting, to the platform. In spite of what
may seem an over-indulgence in refreshment, Kewpie was in excellent
voice and a jovial mood, and sang four rollicking songs in a manner that
captured his audience. In fact, long after Kewpie had vanished from the
public gaze and returned to his ice-cream, the audience still demanded
more.
Its attention was eventually captured, however, by Dan Whipple, who
announced importantly that it gave him much pleasure to say that, at a
great expense, the committee had secured as an added attraction the
world-famed Signor Duodelli, who, with their kind permission, would
exhibit for their pleasure and astoundment his miraculous act known as
the Vanishing Man, as performed before the crowned heads of Europe, to
the bewilderment and applause of all beholders. “Ladies and gentlemen,
Signor Duodelli!”
The Signor had a noticeable likeness to Lew Cooper, in spite of his
gorgeous mustache and flowing robe of red and purple cheese-cloth. Yet
it might not have been Lew, for his manner was extremely foreign and his
gestures and the few words he used in directing the arranging of his
“properties” were unmistakably Latin. The properties consisted of a
kitchen chair, a threefold screen covered with black baize, and a coil
of rope. There was also in evidence a short wand, but the Signor held
that in his hand, waving it around most eloquently. The audience laughed
and applauded and waited patiently until the chair had been placed
exactly to the Signor’s liking, close to the back of the platform, and
the screen beside it. Previously several of the lights had been put out,
and those that remained threw their glare on the front of the stage,
leaving the back, while discernible, less in evidence.
“Now,” announced the Signor, narrowly escaping from falling off the
platform as he tripped over his robe, “I aska da some one coma up and
giva da help. Any one I aska. You, Signor, maybe, eh?” The magician
pointed his wand at Mr. Cornish, in the front of the clustered audience;
but the gentleman laughingly declined. The Signor seemed disappointed.
“No-o-o? You no geta da hurt. Some one else, eh?” He looked invitingly
around, and a small junior, urged by his companions, struggled to the
front. Unfortunately for his ambitions to pose in the lime-light, the
Signor’s glance had moved to another quarter, and, ere the junior could
get his attention, a volunteer appeared from the semi-obscurity of the
kitchen porch. He was peculiarly attired, wearing a simple white garment
having a strong resemblance to the old-fashioned night-shirt, that
covered him completely from neck to ankles. He was bareheaded, revealing
the fact that his locks were red-brown in hue.
“Ah!” exclaimed the Signor, delightedly. “You will helpa me, _si_? Right
thisa way, Signor. I thanka you!”
“That’s one of the Turner fellows,” muttered a boy, while the small
junior and his companions called “Fake!” loudly. However, the
good-natured laughter of the audience drowned the accusation, and some
two hundred pairs of eyes watched amusedly and expectantly while, with
the assistance of two other volunteers, the youth in the white robe was
tied securely to the chair.
“Maka him tight,” directed the Signor, enthusiastically, waving his
wand. “Pulla da knot. Ha, thata da way! Good! Signors, I thanka you!”
The two who had tied the victim to the chair retired from the platform.
The Signor seized the screen and opened it wide and turned it around and
closed it and turned it again.
“You seea?” he demanded. “There is nothing that deceive! Now, then, I
placea da screen so!” He folded it around the boy and the chair, leaving
only the side away from the audience uncovered. He drew away the width
of the platform, and, “Music, ifa you please,” he requested. The
orchestra, whose members had moved their chairs to one side, struck up a
merry tune, and the Signor, folding his arms, bent a rapt gaze on the
blank, impenetrable blackness of the screen. A brief moment passed. Then
the Signor bade the music cease, took a step forward, and pointed to the
screen.
“Away!” he cried, and swung his arm in a half-circle, his body following
with a weird flaring of his brilliant robes until, with outstretched
finger, he faced the audience. “Ha! He come! Thisa way, Signor! Comea
quick!”
As one man the audience turned and followed the pointing finger. Through
the deserted arbor came a boy in a white garment. He pushed his way
through the throng and jumped to the stage. As he did so, the Signor
whisked aside the screen. There was the chair empty, and there was the
rope dangling from it, twisted and knotted.
A moment of surprised silence gave place to hearty applause.
Theoretically it might have been possible for the boy in the chair to
vanish from behind the screen, reach the farther end of the garden, and
run back into sight; but actually, as the audience realized on second
thought, it couldn’t possibly have been done in the few seconds, surely
not more than ten, that had elapsed between the placing of the screen
and the appearance of the boy behind them. And then, how had he got
himself free from the rope? An audience likes to be puzzled, and this
one surely was. The garden hummed with conjecture and discussion. There
were some there who could have explained the seeming phenomenon, but
they held their counsel.
Meanwhile, on the platform the Signor was modestly bowing alternately to
the audience and to his subject, the latter apparently no worse for his
magic transposition. And the orchestra again broke into its interrupted
melody. The applause became insistent, but Signor Duodelli, perhaps
because his contract with the committee called for no further evidence
of his powers, only bowed and bowed and at last disappeared into the
obscurity of the shadows. Whereupon the Banjo and Mandolin Club moved
into the house, and presently the strains of a one-step summoned the
dancers to the big drawing-room.
Laurie, unconsciously rubbing a wrist, smiled as he listened to the
comments of the dissolving audience. “Well, but there’s no getting
around the fact that it was the same boy,” declared a pompous little
gentleman to his companion. “Same hair and eyes and everything! Couldn’t
be two boys as much alike, eh? Not possibly! Very clever!”
Laurie chuckled as he made his way to Polly’s booth. That young lady
looked a little tired, and, by the same token, so did the Yale booth!
Only a bare dozen framed pictures and a small number of post-cards
remained of her stock. “Don’t you think I’ve done awfully well?” asked
Polly, a trifle pathetically. She seemed to need praise, and Laurie
supplied it.
“Corking, Polly,” he assured her. “I guess you’ve sold more than any of
the others, haven’t you?”
“N-no, I guess some of the others have done better, Nod; but I think
they had more attractive articles, don’t you? Anyhow, I’ve taken in
twelve dollars and thirty cents since supper, and I made four dollars
and eighty-five cents this afternoon; only I must have dropped a dime
somewhere, for I’m ten cents short. Or perhaps someone didn’t give me
the right amount.”
“Why, that’s seventeen dollars!” exclaimed Laurie. “I didn’t think you
had anywhere near seventeen dollars’ worth of things here, Polly!”
“Oh, I didn’t! Not nearly! Why, if I’d sold things at the prices marked
on them, Nod, I wouldn’t have had more than half as much! But lots of
folks _wanted_ to pay more, and I let them. Mr. Conklin, the jeweler,
bought a picture, one of the funny landscapes with the frames that
didn’t fit at the corners, and he said it was ridiculous to sell it for
a quarter, and he gave me a dollar for it. Then he held the picture up
and just laughed and laughed at it! I guess he just wanted to spend his
money, don’t you? You know, Ned said we were to get as much as we could
for things, so I usually added ten cents to the price that was marked on
them—sometimes more, if a person looked extravagant. One lady came back
and said she’d paid twenty-five cents for a picture and it was marked
fifteen on the back. I said I was sorry she was dissatisfied and I’d be
very glad to buy it back from her for twenty.”
Laurie laughed. “What did she say to that?” he asked.
“She said if I wanted it bad enough to pay twenty cents for it she
guessed it was worth twenty-five, and went off and didn’t come back.”
Polly laughed and then sighed. “I’m awfully tired. Doesn’t that music
sound lovely? Do you dance?”
Laurie shook his head. “No; but, say, if you want to go in there, I’ll
watch the booth for you.”
Polly hesitated. “It’s funny you don’t,” she said. “Don’t you like it?”
It was Laurie’s turn to hesitate. “No, not much. I never have danced.
It—it seems sort of silly.” He looked at Polly doubtfully. Although he
wouldn’t have acknowledged it, he was more than half sorry that dancing
was not included among his accomplishments.
“It isn’t silly at all,” asserted Polly, almost indignantly. “You ought
to learn. Mae could teach you to one-step in no time at all!”
“I guess that’s about the way I’d do it,” answered Laurie, sadly—“in no
time at all! Don’t you—couldn’t _you_ teach a fellow?”
“I don’t believe so. I never tried to teach any one. Besides, Mae dances
lots better than I do. She put the things she had left on Grace
Boswell’s booth and went inside the minute the music started. She wanted
me to come, but I thought I shouldn’t,” added Polly, virtuously.
“You go ahead now,” urged Laurie. “I’ll stay here till you come back. It
isn’t fair for you girls to miss the dancing. Besides, I guess there
won’t be much more sold now. Folks have begun to go, some of them, and
most of the others are inside.”
Polly looked toward the house. Through the big wide-open windows the
lilting music of a waltz floated out. The Banjo and Mandolin Club was
really doing very well to-night. Polly sighed once and looked wistful.
Then she shook her head. “Thanks, Nod,” she said, “but I guess I’ll stay
here. Some one _might_ come.”
“What do you care? You don’t own ’em! Anyway, I guess I could sell a
post-card if I had to!”
“You’d have trouble selling any of those pictures,” laughed Polly.
“Aren’t they dreadful? Where did they come from?”
“Pretty fierce,” Laurie agreed. “They came from the Metropolitan
Furniture Store. The man dug them out of a corner in the cellar. I guess
he’d had them for years! Anyway, there was enough dust on them to choke
you. He seemed awfully tickled when we agreed to take them and let him
alone!”
“I should think he might have! We girls agreed to buy things from each
other, just to help, but the only things they bought from me were
post-cards!” Polly laughed as though at some thought; and Laurie, who
had elevated himself to an empty corner of the booth and was swinging
his feet against the blue draping in front, looked inquiringly. “I was
just thinking about the boys,” explained Polly.
“What about them? What boys do you mean?” Laurie asked coldly.
“The high school boys. They’re awfully peeved because we girls took part
in this, and not one of them has been here, I guess.”
“Cheeky beggars,” grumbled Laurie. “Guess we can do without them,
though. Here comes Bob’s father.”
Mr. Starling was bent on a most peculiar mission. Laurie and Polly
watched him stop at the next booth and engage in conversation. Then a
fat pocket-book was produced, a bill was tendered, and Mr. Starling
strolled on. At the Yale booth he stopped again.
“Well, Turner,” he greeted, “this affair looks like a huge success,
doesn’t it? Why aren’t you young folks inside there, dancing?”
“I don’t dance, sir,” answered Laurie, somewhat to his chagrin in a most
apologetic tone. “And Polly thinks she ought to stand by the ship. This
is Polly Deane, Mr. Starling.”
Bob’s father shook hands cordially across the depleted counter and
assured its proprietor that he was very glad indeed to make her
acquaintance. Then he added: “But you don’t seem to have much left, Miss
Polly. Now, I’m a great hand at a bargain. I dare say that if you made
me a fair price for what there is here I’d jump at it. What do you say?”
Polly apparently didn’t know just what to say for a minute, and her gaze
sought counsel of Laurie.
“If you ask me,” laughed the latter, “I’d say fifty cents was a big
price for the lot!”
“You’re not in charge,” said Mr. Starling, almost severely. “I’m sure
the young lady has better business ability. Suppose you name a price,
Miss Polly.”
“We-ell—” Polly did some mental arithmetic, and then, doubtfully: “A
dollar and a half, sir,” she said.
“Done!” replied Mr. Starling. He drew forth a two-dollar bill. “There
you are! Just leave the things where they are. I’ll look after them
later. Now you youngsters go in and dance. What’s this? Change? My dear
young lady, don’t you know that change is never given at an affair of
this kind? I really couldn’t think of taking it. It—it’s a criminal
offense!” And Mr. Starling nodded and walked away.
“By Jove, he’s a brick!” exclaimed Laurie, warmly. “Look, he’s doing the
same thing everywhere!”
“I know,” answered Polly, watching. “It’s just dear of him, isn’t it?
But, Nod, _what_ do you suppose he will do with these awful pictures?”
“The same thing he will do with that truck he’s buying now,” was the
laughing reply. “He will probably put them in the furnace!”
“Well,” said Polly, after a moment, “I suppose we might as well go
inside, don’t you? We can look on, anyway, and”—with a stifled
sigh—“I’d ’most as lief look on as dance.”
Laurie followed, for the second time in his life wishing that the
Terpsichorean art had been included in his education!