"'I'll stir
This hank of hair, this patch of fur,
This feather and this flapping fin,
This claw, this bone, this dried snake skin.'"
"Oh, Kitty, for mercy's sake hush!" said Allison; "you make my blood run cold."
"But I must, if we've only a week to get ready in. I expect to say it day and night. It's better to do that than to take more than a week, and give up the camping party, isn't it?"
"It's going to be a howling success," prophesied Malcolm. "When mamma and auntie and Aunt Mary go into a scheme the way they are doing now, costumes and drills, and all sorts of impossible things don't count at all. We'll be ready in plenty of time."
"Especially," said the Little Colonel, with dignity, "when mothah and Papa Jack are goin' to do so much. My pa'ht is longah than anybody's."
Next morning at the depot, the post-office, and the blacksmith shop a sign was displayed which everybody stopped to read. Similar announcements nailed on various trees throughout the Valley caused many an old farmer to pull up his team and adjust his spectacles for a closer view of this novel poster.
They were all Miss Allison's work. Each one bore at the top a crayon sketch of a huge St. Bernard, with a Red Cross on its collar and shoulder-bags. Underneath was a notice to the effect that an entertainment would be given the following Friday night in the college hall, a short concert, followed by a play called "The Princess Winsome's Rescue," in which Hero, the Red Cross dog recently brought from Switzerland, would take a prominent part. The proceeds were to be given to the cause of the Red Cross.
That announcement alone would have drawn a large crowd, but added to that was the fact that twenty families in the Valley had each contributed a child to the fairy chorus or the group of flower messengers, and were thus personally interested in the success of the entertainment.
There was scarcely standing-room when the doors were opened Friday evening. Papa Jack felt well repaid for his part in the hurried preparations when, after the musical part of the programme, he heard the buzz of admiration that went around the room, as the curtain rose on the first scene of the play. It was the dimly lighted witch's orchard.
Across the stage, five feet back from the footlights, ran a snaky-looking fence with high-spiked posts. It had taken him all morning to build it, even with Alec's and Walker's help. Above this peered a thicket of small trees and underbrush bearing a marvellous crop of gold and silver apples and plums. Real gold and silver fruit it looked to be in the dim light, and not the discarded ornaments of a score of old Christmas-trees. A stuffed owl kept guard on one high gate-post, and a huge black velvet cat on the other.