“Can’t you all tell
That I’m Maribelle,
I’m the Man in the Moon, you see.”
The audience was scarcely satisfied with one repetition of this, but time was pressing and the program had to go on. By this time a fish, a bird and a moon had been added to the symbols on the head band.
The girls enjoyed taking off the camp doctor in the next act, called on the program, The Infirmary, Doctor—and Gargling Girls. There had been some mild cases of tonsilitis, immediately isolated in the “Infirmary”, where, with skull and cross-bones, the girls had announced the “Leper Colony” on a clever sign, and bewailed their isolation. This was all portrayed in the sketch. First the girls appeared, wrapped in long bath robes and singing pathetically about the “tonsils’ retreat” and the “little cots, whose owners have spots,—
And the doctor’s job,
Their throats to swab,
Can’t be beat!”
Their temperature was “torrid” and the gargle “horrid”. Then came the doctor, who looked at their throats with the aid of an immense kitchen spoon, and sang with great enjoyment a solo to the effect that he had waited long to catch them, but had them fast quarantined now. Giving each a spoonful from a large bottle, he stood before them like an orchestra leader, and beat time with the spoon, while in throaty tones to the tune of John Brown’s Body the girls sang, “Gargle, gargle, gargle, gargle,” etc., and falling into a procession behind the doctor, filed out. This proved so popular that the “doctor” was forced to repeat his solo and lead again the chorus of gargling girls. Frances, of course, as the tallest of the girls, impersonated the doctor and tried to imitate his step and movements. This time the curtains parted to show a spoon on the head band.
“What do you suppose the next will be?” asked Jean in the audience.