As soon as the drill was over our interest centred on this party. The committee from our circle of King’s Daughters waited upon Madame, and obtained her permission for the projected entertainment. She stipulated, however, that it must be strictly confined to members of the school and no outsiders admitted.
“The Literary Society,” she said, “will give its public entertainment in the spring, and we do not wish to have the reputation of spending our entire time in getting up charity bazaars, and imposing on our friends to buy tickets. Anything in reason which you care to do among yourselves, I will consent to. It does young girls good to have an occasional frolic.”
Emboldened by the unusually happy frame of mind in which Madame seemed to be basking, Winnie asked if we might act a play and have “gentlemen characters” in it. Formerly the assumption of masculine attire had been prohibited, and at one of our Literary Society dramas, a half curtain had been stretched across the stage, giving a view of only the upper portion of the persons of the actors. The young ladies taking the part of the male personages in the play, wore cutaway coats outside their dresses, and riding hats or Tam O’Shanter caps.
Madame laughed as she recalled that absurd spectacle. “Since your audience is strictly limited to your associates, I think I may suspend that rule for this occasion,” she said leniently. “When do you intend to give the play? I cannot allow you to use the chapel. How would the studio do?”
“If you please,” said Winnie, “we would like the laundry.”
“The laundry!” Madame exclaimed in surprise.
“Yes, Madame. Tina Gale explored the lower regions under the school building one day, and the furnace room, and the long dim galleries connecting the coal bins, the cellars, and the laundry seemed to her so mysterious and pokerish that she thought it would be a nice idea to call it a Catacomb Party, especially as the girls have been so much interested in Professor Todd’s early history of the Christian Church.”
Madame’s eyes twinkled as she heard this, for Professor Todd had been generally voted a prosy old nuisance; but Winnie was earnestness itself.
“Very well,” said Madame kindly. “I do not want the girls to think that I am a cruel tyrant, or unduly strict or suspicious. [“She was thinking of the way in which she arraigned Adelaide for corresponding with Professor Waite,” Winnie commented afterward.] If your committee will submit the programme to me, I have no doubt I shall be able to approve of everything. Let me see—the laundry will be your circus maximus, or theatre. Where will you have your refreshments?”
We had not thought of that.