"We'll put the play last," Noreen said impressively, "and we four will do it, and say nothing to anybody else. Joey, just tell some of these juniors who are doing nothing to arrange the chairs for a show and pull the curtains across the platform; and then we can get on to our job. You're sure the Professor is coming?"
"Miss Conyngham laughed frightfully nicely and said she was sure all the Staff would be delighted, and she thought it a topping idea," Joey said; and on that the four got to work in earnest.
Miss Conyngham gave gracious permission for the two forms below Remove II. to sit up for the performance, so a large audience was already assembled when the staff of Redlands swept into the Queen's Hall—Miss Conyngham with her arm through Miss Craigie's—to place themselves in the "stalls" specially retained for them. Joey, watching through a chink in the curtains shutting off the platform, was delighted to see that the Professor sat upon the other side of Miss Conyngham. He looked placid and pleased enough now, so far as his large, pallid face could be said to show any expression at all. The audience was further swelled by the servants, indoor and out, even including two or three men who were repairing pipes.
The performance began with Gabrielle's newest violin-piece—a nocturne, executed very correctly but rather nervously. The school applauded vigorously, as they would have applauded anything from the popular Heads of the Upper or Lower School. Ingrid followed, jarringly dramatic in Noyes' Highwayman, and was violently appreciated. Clare, not having to face her audience, the piano being sideways to the stage, gave the most successful performance of the three, but took a strictly secondary place in the way of applause.
Then, after some whispering and stifled giggling, Joey was pushed forward to the front of the stage, and the curtain drawn back a chink. She spoke through it.
"I have to announce that the forthcoming charade is in two syllables and three scenes. The third is the complete word."
She withdrew, and all the juniors started thinking aloud of two-syllabled words. They were quite audible on the stage, where Barbara, spectacled and padded as to body, was bending over a steaming fish-kettle, prodding it nervously. "I thought if you boiled germs you killed them," she whispered. "This seems so jolly like the witches in Macbeth."
"Go on, you silly ass," urged Noreen. "It looks all right anyhow, and you've got the photo-plates for growing the germs on. Come on, Joey, I must tie you up."
Joey, attired in a plaid going-out frock belonging to one of the little ones, to represent a kilt, a khaki sports coat, buttoned across, and two box straps for a Sam-Browne belt, was forthwith lashed brutally to a curtain pole, and ordered not to so much as breathe for fear she should move it and it should become plain to the audience that it was leaning against her and she could have walked off with it quite easily.