“All right, it is better. Now, the play begins. This is an illustrated ballad, you know. Will somebody with a sweet voice kindly recite the words?”
“I will,” volunteered Hal, himself. “My voice is as sweet as taffy.”
He began intoning the nursery rhyme, and Patty and Philip strolled through the hall, swinging the bucket between them, and acting like two country children going for water. They climbed the stairs, laboriously, as if clambering up a steep hill, and as they went up, Philip hastily whispered to Patty how they were to come down.
She understood quickly, and as the second line was drawled out they stood at the top of the stairs. Then when Hal said, “Jack fell down——” there was a terrific plunge and Philip tumbled, head over heels, all the way downstairs, with the big copper bucket rolling bumpety-bump down beside him. He was a trained athlete, and knew how to fall without hurting himself, but his mad pitching made it seem entirely an accidental fall. In the screams of laughter, the last line could scarcely be heard, but when Hal said, “And Jill came tumbling after,” Patty poised on the top step, leaning over so far that it seemed as if in a moment she must pitch headlong. Her fancy dance training enabled her to hold this precarious position, and as she stood, motionless, a beautiful tableau, everybody applauded.
“All over!” cried the Lord of Misrule, after a moment. “Curtain’s down!”
There was only an imaginary curtain, so considering herself dismissed, Patty came tripping downstairs, and the broken-crowned Jack stood waiting to receive her.
“Good work!” he commented. “How could you stand in that breakneck position?”
“How could you take that breakneck fall?” she queried back, and then they sought a nearby seat to witness the next “play.”
“Now,” said the Lord of Misrule, “we will have a thrilling drama by Miss Dow and—well, she may select her own company.”
“I choose Jim Kenerley,” said Daisy, suddenly remembering a little trick they used to do in school. A whispered word was enough to recall it to Jim’s mind, and in a twinkling he had snatched a gay silk lamp-shade from an electrolier and clapped it on his head, and draped around him a Bagdad couch cover. Then he caught up a big bronze dagger from a writing-table, and he and Daisy went to the staircase landing, which was almost like a stage. Seemingly, Jim was a fearful bandit, dragging a lady, who hung back with moans and cries.