It was Betty in a short red cape and a tightly drawn red hood. With the red light falling upon her round cheeks and her laughing eyes, she looked indeed like a little maid from the fields.
“Doesn’t the Glad Girl make a splendid Red Riding-hood?” cried Ben, turning a somersault on the hearth-rug. “And wouldn’t the wolf have a fine time eating her up!” he added, capering back to draw the curtain.
Red Riding-hood herself announced the next show, “George Washington,” who was no other than Ben, standing on a large book covered with white cloth to represent a block of ice, and wearing a cock-hat and an old military coat which came down to his heels—a brave-faced Father of his Country.
“You forgot to say ‘Crossing the Delaware,’ Betty,” exclaimed the show-figure, leaning forward on his very thick sword made out of the fire-tongs covered with brown paper.
“Of course they would know that,” Betty replied; and the audience agreed that they would have known it without being told.
“Just one more,” cried Ben, stepping from off the block of ice to help Betty draw the curtain. “This one’s going to take a very long time to get ready, and you must guess the name of it. May I whisper to the Black Lace Lady, mother?”
Mrs. Holt nodded permission, and Ben whispered something into Miss Ruth’s ear, to which she must have agreed, for he carried her heavy coat into the parlour, where Betty and Elsa were, and shut the door.
It took so long for them to arrange this last show that Mrs. Holt and Miss Ruth finished making the first of the dolls’ dresses, and Mrs. Holt was sewing upon the second one for Alice, when Betty called “Ready!” and pulled back the curtain to disclose a marvellous sight.
There stood Elsa, behind a wall of sofa pillows, her hair floating down over the light blue silk scarf which covered her shoulders and her slender figure draped in a dark blue velvet table-cover, while on her shoulder perched a stuffed gray squirrel. On the step below the pillow-wall knelt Ben, wearing Miss Ruth’s long coat with the gray fur lining side out, his head and arms covered with Betty’s gray boa. This strange-looking figure was pulling with his teeth at a sofa pillow in the supposed wall, and repeating, in a muffled voice: “Keep a good heart! Keep a good heart!”
“Princess Katrina and the Gray Owl!” Alice cried out, the moment her eyes fell upon this group. “How lovely, how lovely!” she said over and over again, clapping her hands. Mrs. Holt and Ruth Warren joined in the applause, laughing until the tears came into their eyes, for Ben was such a ridiculously funny figure, although so well made up.