If Eleanor suspected any hidden motive behind Madeline’s sudden departure she had no way of confirming her theory, and when Betty escorted the entertainment committee, all of whom happened to be splendid workers but without a spark of originality among them, to Eleanor’s room, and declaring sadly that she couldn’t remember half the features of the toy-shop that they had discussed together, claimed Eleanor’s half-promise of help, why there was nothing for Eleanor to do but redeem it. Nothing at least that the new Eleanor Watson cared to do. It was plain enough that the committee wanted her suggestions, and what other people might think of her motive for helping them really mattered very little in comparison with the success of 19—’s entertainment. Thus the new Eleanor Watson argued, and then she went to work.
“The wires are all right so far,” Betty wrote Madeline. “The girls are all lovely, and they’d better be. Eleanor has arranged the dearest play for the dolls, all about a mad old German doll-maker who has a shop full of automatons and practices magic to try to bring them to life. Some village girls come in and one changes clothes with a doll and he thinks he’s succeeded. Eleanor saw it somewhere, but she had to change it all around.
“Alice Waite wanted the dolls to give Ibsen’s ‘Doll’s House.’ She didn’t know what it was about of course, or who wrote it. She just went by the name. The other classes have got hold of the joke and guy us to death.
“You’d better come back and have some of the fun. Besides, nobody can think how to make a costume for the mock-turtle. It’s Roberta, and it’s going to dance with the gryphon for the animal counter’s side-show. Eleanor thought of that too.”
But Madeline telegraphed Roberta laconically: “Gray carpet paper shell, mark scales shoe-blacking, lace together sides,” and continued to sojourn in Washington Square.
Late in the afternoon of the toy-shop’s grand opening she appeared in the door of the gymnasium and stood there a moment staring at the curious spectacle within.
The curtain was just going down on the dolls’ pantomime, and the audience was applauding and hurrying off to make the rounds of the other attractions before dinner time. In clarion tones that made themselves heard above the din Emily Davis was advertising an auction of her animals, beginning with “one perfectly good baa-lamb.”
“Hear him baa,” cried Emily, “and you’ll forget that his legs are wobbly.”
“This way to the Punch and Judy,” shouted Barbara Gordon hoarsely through a megaphone. “Give the children a season of refined and educating amusement. Libretto by our most talented satirist. Don’t miss it.”
“Hello, Madeline,” cried Lucile Merrifield, spying the new arrival. “When did you get back? Come and see the puppets with me. They say your show is great.”