This peremptory summons recalls the girl to the business of the evening, and giving a quick nod of comprehension to her governess, they both hurry through the few remaining bars, and finishing up with two or three banging, crashing chords, as Molly puts it, she pushes back her chair and promptly disappears.
There is only a delay of a few seconds before the little bell tinkles again, and while Miss Denison plays a soft melody the curtain rises on the first tableau.
Certainly "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe" was a great success.
Colonel Danvers, arrayed in one of the nurse's cotton gowns, with a little shawl pinned over his shoulders and a large poke-bonnet, looks the character of the "old woman" to perfection, as with one hand he grasps Honor's arm with a firm grip, whilst a formidable-looking birch is raised threateningly over her with the other. The rest of the children are all seated round and about the shoe in various attitudes; some half in and half out of it. All are supplied with basins, popularly supposed to contain broth, and Molly, well to the fore, with bare feet and rumpled head, is pausing in the act of carrying her spoon to her mouth, with a distinct expression of "Will it be my turn next?" in her wide-open blue eyes.
The curtain goes down amidst a storm of applause; and it being arranged that no encores will be accepted, there is instantly a rush of pattering feet across the stage, accompanied by much giggling and whispering, and then a mysterious sound of pushing and dragging, which duly announces the removal of the shoe.
Honor's "Mother Hubbard" comes next, and Molly once more takes her place at the piano, her presence not being required again on the stage until the end of the first part of the programme, where her much-dreaded part of the "Maiden all forlorn" comes on. Molly is anything but happy in her mind about this part of the programme, she having grave misgivings as to Hugh's intentions in the matter.
"Look here, Hugh," she says, when his services not being in request elsewhere he strolls into the room and hangs over the piano, nominally to turn over the music, "I shall ask Colonel Danvers to make our picture awfully short. I don't know, I'm sure, how you mean to manage about that stupid kiss; but it is very certain you can't keep on kissing me all the time; and another thing is, if you have your face so close to mine I know I shall be tempted to bite you. I shouldn't be able to help it, I am sure."
"Well, I suppose I must risk that," laughs Hugh good-naturedly; "and I don't suppose you would bite very hard either."
"O, wouldn't I though! my teeth are as sharp as anything. You have no idea what they can do when they give their mind to a thing. Hush! here is Doris's 'Mary, Mary.' Doesn't she look pretty?"
And so she does. A chintz with a green ground has carried the day,—green being, Doris had declared, the colour best suited to Mary's contrariness of nature. So green it is, even to the neat little high-heel shoes of which Doris is not a little proud.