"How absurd you are, Dick!" exclaims that damsel satirically. "Where would you get all the people from? Do for goodness' sake bring the picture before your mind's eye for a moment. Why, besides Hamlet and Ophelia there are the king and queen, all their ladies and gentlemen, and then all the players. Why, we couldn't do it, not with all the boys next door even; and just think what a bother the scene would be to arrange. We should want a double stage, and all sorts of regal appendages which I am sure we could not find anywhere. You Hamlet, too!" she finishes up with scorn.
"All right! Don't excite yourself," says Dick calmly.
"I think," says Honor, "we shall be wiser to keep to the nursery rhymes, because we can take any amount of license with them, and use our own discretion about the dressing of them. But if we take a scene that everybody knows we must be careful to have everything perfectly correct; and though I should be sorry to underrate the talent of such celebrities in the art of acting as ourselves, I don't think we are up to it. Now, Doris, read your list."
"Mother Hubbard," reads Doris; "verse where she looks in the cupboard. Vic will do the dog capitally. Molly will coach her up in her part and—"
"There, you hear!" exclaims that young lady. "Doris calls them parts too, and so they are, of course!" and looking at her brother defiantly she attacks the chestnuts with renewed ardour.
"What shall we do for the cupboard?" inquires Daisy with wide-open eyes.
"We can get Mrs. Mason to let us have one of her portable safes up, and if there are a few plates and dishes left inside, with anything in the eatable way on them, Vic is sure to sit up and beg."
"Well, that one will do," says Molly, getting up and hanging over her sister's shoulder; "but read on, Doris. Look! the time is going on awfully fast; in another hour you'll have to dress."
So Doris reads the list, which gives general satisfaction. Then laying it down, she says, "If only father helps us, we shall do. He only wants a little petting and coaxing, and I am sure he will. Hark! that's the carriage now, isn't it? Run and look, Dick; is it father?"
"Yes, and it's snowing like anything. I declare he has got quite white while standing a minute to speak to Rawlings. We must give him time to get off his coat and speak to mother, and then we'll fetch him up here, and not let him go until he promises all we want."