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

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."