The small piece chosen did not require much either in the way of rehearsing, scenery, or costumes, which was just as well, for the time was short, and the day of the tea-party seemed to arrive almost directly. By four o'clock the school was full of impatient children, dressed in their best, the girls with their heads such marvels of frizzing and curling that you could well imagine their hair had been screwed up in plaits and papers for several days previously, while the boys were shiny with soap and hair-oil. Lilian and Peggy were soon hard at work pouring out tea as if for dear life, while Archie and Bobby distributed buns and ham-sandwiches with lightning speed, which seemed to vanish with equal quickness, for many of the boys had dispensed with dinner in order to enjoy their tea the more.
'The big boy in the corner drank twelve cups!' declared Peggy, 'and little Willie Jones had eight, or even nine, for I lost count; and the boy from Monkend Farm ate at least fourteen buns. I believe he pocketed a few, though I never could catch him!'
Peggy was in her element; she was able to manage, or, as Archie called it, 'boss around,' to her heart's content. She kept a severe eye on the small children, patted them firmly on the back when they choked, and refused to allow them to grab at the cake, regulating their tea according to her own notions of what was good for them, and turning stolen lumps of sugar out of their pockets with the cleverness of a detective.
Tea was over at last, and the crumby remains having been cleared away, the tables were pushed to one side of the great schoolroom to form the platform, while the benches were arranged in rows to accommodate the audience, which at present was indulging in an amount of noise only to be equalled by the Tower of Babel. Peggy, hard at work behind the scenes, put her eye to a hole in the curtain, and surveyed the prospect below, where children big and little were engaged in jumping over the forms, chasing each other round the stove, and generally acting more like monkeys at the Zoo than civilized human beings, while the Rector strove in vain to collect them at the empty end of the room to play games, and the curate, a shy young man fresh from Oxford, looked as if he would have preferred to wrestle with a consignment of heathens from the Cannibal Islands.
'Come along, Bobby,' said Peggy; 'we ought to go and help. Archie and Lilian can arrange the scenery quite well. The Rector is getting pulled to pieces, and poor Mr. Wentworth has lost his glasses.'
Mrs. Davenport would have approved of Peggy for once, for even the pattern Bertha could not have displayed more energy in a parish emergency. She promptly organized a game of 'Oranges and Lemons,' herself leading the long tail of infants who passed under the Rector's and Mr. Wentworth's upraised hands; she set the boys to swing honey-pots, and the girls to play 'Drop the Handkerchief'; she boldly interposed her small person between the fists of two fighting hobbledehoys, and seized a little boy by the boot who had ventured to climb up the stove-pipe; she welcomed some of the parents who had begun to arrive for the entertainment, and found them comfortable places on the benches, even nursing one of the babies while its mother went to the rescue of an older child, who was being forcibly held down and sat upon by several of its companions; and by the time the bell was rung, and the audience requested to take their places, she was almost as hot and pulled about as the Rector himself, but with a feeling of conscious virtue that made up for everything.
The first part of the entertainment was to be chiefly musical, so the proceedings began with a waltz by Lilian, who was always the Rector's mainstay in making up a programme, and had helped at most of his Sunday-school concerts since she was ten years old. A violin solo followed from the village tailor, who was much applauded, most of the hearers being persuaded that not even the band in the Warford Public Gardens could surpass 'Bill Evans and his fiddle.' Little Jimmy Carson recited 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' in a high, thin, piping voice, standing on tiptoe in his eagerness to give due effect to the famous lines, flinging out his arms wildly to indicate where
'Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them
Volleyed and thundered,'
and getting so mixed up with his aspirates that he concluded with:
'Honour the charge they made,
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six 'undred.'