But Madeline shook her head. "I loathe committees," she explained. "You go along and see Miss Lawrence and be on your committee, if you like. And when you want some help with the stunts or the costumes—I have a lot of drapery and jewelry and such stuff—why, come and tell me, and I'll do what I can."
And no amount of persuasion on the part of Mary, Marion Lawrence, or the Loan Fund Committee en masse, could induce Madeline to change her mind. "Why, I can't be on a committee," she said. "I get around to recitations and meals and class meetings, and that's all I can possibly manage. You don't realize that I'd never had to be on time for anything in all my life till I came here, except for trains sometimes,—and you can generally count on their being a little late. No, I can't and won't come to committee meetings and be bored. But all that I have is yours," and Madeline tossed a long and beautifully curled mustache at Mary, and a roll of Persian silk at Marion. "For the circus barker," she explained, "and the Indian juggler's turban. I'll make the turban, if the juggler doesn't know how. They're apt to come apart, if you don't get the right twist. And I'll see about that little show of my own, if you really think it's worth having."
So, though her name did not appear on the list of the committee or on the posters, it was largely due to Madeline Ayres that the Harding Aid "Show" was such a tremendous success.
"The way to get up a good thing," she declared, "is to let each person see to her own stunt. Then it's no trouble to any one else. And you'd better have the show next week, before we all get bored to death with the idea."
These theories were exactly in accordance with Harding sentiment, so next week the "Show" was,—in the gymnasium, for it rapidly outgrew the Belden House parlors, where Mary and Madeline had at first thought of holding it. It was amazing how much talent Madeline and the committee, between them, managed to unearth. The little dressing-rooms at the ends of the big hall had to be called into requisition, and the college doctor's office, and Miss Andrews' room, and even the swimming tank in the basement (it leaked and so the water had all been drained off), with an improvised roof made by pinning Bagdad couch-covers together. All along the sides of the gymnasium hall there were little curtained booths, while the four corners of the gallery were turned respectively into a gypsy tent, a witch's den, the grotesque abode of an Egyptian sorceress, and the businesslike offices of a dapper little French medium, just over from Paris.
You could have your fortune told in whichever corner you preferred,—or in all four if your money lasted. Then you could descend to the floor below, and eat and drink as many concoctions as your digestion could stand, sandwiching between your "rabbits," Japanese or Russian tea, fudges, chocolate, and creamed oysters, visits to the circus, the menagerie, the vaudeville, and the multitude of side-shows. "Side-show," so the posters announced, was the designation of "a bewildering variety of elegant one-act specialties." Mary Brooks was very proud of that phrasing.
Mary herself was in charge of the menagerie. "Not to be compared for a single instant with the animals of the biggest show on earth," she shouted through her megaphone, accompanying her remarks with impressive waves of her riding-whip.
Then the white baby elephant walked forth from its lair. It was composed of one piece of white cheese-cloth and two of Mary's most ardent freshman admirers. There was a certain wobbly buoyancy in its gait and a jauntiness about its waving white trunk,—which was locked at the end, as Mary explained, to guard against the ferocious assaults of this terrible man-eater,—which never failed to convulse the audience and put them in the proper humor for the rest of the performance. The snake-charmer exhibited her paper pets. The lion, made up on the principle of the one in "Midsummer Night's Dream" pawed and roared and assured timid ladies that she was not a lion at all, but only that far more awful creature, a Harding senior. And finally Mary opened the cage containing the Happy Family, and there filed out a quartette of strange beasts which no Harding girl in the audience failed to recognize as the four "class animals,"—the seniors' red lion, the juniors' purple cow, the green dragon beloved by the sophomores, and the freshmen's yellow chicken.
"They dance" announced Mary in beatific tones, and the three four-legged creatures stood on their hind legs and, joining paws and wings with the chicken, went through a solemn Alice-in-Wonderland-like dance. This was always terminated abruptly by some animal or another's being overcome by mirth or suffocation, and rushing unceremoniously back into the cage to recuperate. When the Happy Family was again reunited, Mary announced that they could also sing, and, each in a different key, the creatures burst forth with the "Animal Song," dear to the hearts of all Harding girls:
"I went to the Animal Fair; the great Red Lion was there.
The Purple Cow was telling how
She'd come to take the air.
The Dragon he looked sick, and the little Yellow Chick,
Looked awfully blue, and I think, don't you,
He'd better clear out quick—quick!"