Then Prue crept up on her father’s lap to see “all the other tabs,” she said.
“The ‘Chapeau Blanc,’ which Miss Dayton says means the White Hat,” announced Jotham. This time the curtain swept aside to disclose Phœbe Small’s little face beneath a hat with white gauzy ruffles upon the brim, and a feather held in place by a knot of blue ribbon. A pearly kerchief about the shoulders was most becoming to Phœbe, whose usually expressionless face looked almost piquant under the saucy white hat and feather.
“Don’t she look like a photograph?” whispered Mrs. Small, “and a good deal nicer, if I do say it as shouldn’t,” and Mrs. Small looked around with a sniff at those present who possibly thought their daughters prettier.
Now, Phœbe’s principal defects were an abundance of freckles, and an absence of character in her small face; but the costume was becoming, and the freckles not apparent in the light in which she was posed; so her heart was delighted with words of commendation, and she hoped that Jotham Potts had seen her tableau.
As a matter of fact, Jotham had not seen her; for, having announced that number, he had sat down and waited for Miss Dayton to appear. The next number on the programme was his, and now Helen stepped from behind the curtain to announce it.
“We will now listen to a solo by Jotham Potts.”
“Oh! oo! oo! Does your Jotham sing?” asked Mrs. Brimblecom of Mrs. Potts.
“Why, no; leastways I never heard him,” said Jotham’s mother, with a twinkle in her eyes, for did she not know of Jotham’s evenings spent in practising this very solo with Miss Dayton’s accompaniment?
Randy had said one day to Helen, “You’d ought to hear Jotham Potts whistle. He does it just splendid. It sounds just like the brook rippling.”
When Helen made her plans for the entertainment, she invited him to give a whistling solo.