“Am I so funny as all that?” Leslie asked in gratification.
“You are quite extraordinarily funny,” Doris assured. “The crowd on the campus has been going it strong ever since dinner. They’re awfully frisky. Once they get into the gym they’ll be wanting to dance. Then we won’t be in danger. There’s to be a prize given for the funniest costume. Too bad you can’t stay in the gym long enough to win it.”
“Oh, I don’t want it. I only want a little fun,” Leslie said.
Warily the pair skirted the crowd and went on to the gymnasium. Leslie’s funny face immediately challenged the attention of a number of frisky couples parading the great room. They began flocking about herself and Doris, asking foolish questions in a gleeful effort to learn her identity. She remained mute for which Doris was thankful. Her vacant smiling mask merely continued to beam upon her hilarious questioners.
The Hamtown Gilt Medal Band and Orkestry were already in their corner, importantly ensconced behind a white pasteboard picket fence. They alone of the ruralites were unmasked. They were simple geniuses of music in overalls, gay-checked shirts and high-crowned haying hats of rough straw, speckled green and red. Strings of richly gilded pasteboard medals struggled across each musician’s manly chest; they testified eloquently of past musical achievement. A large gilt-lettered sign, high on a standard flaunted the proud legend: “We have won all the medals in Hamtown for the past forty years. The only other band was a hand organ. Notice our decorations.”
The leader and first violin of this renowned group of musicians was tall and rather blonde, with an imposing blonde goatee and an artistic sweep of curled blonde mustache. His companion players were hardly less well supplied with whiskers, mustaches and even side burns. In direct apposition to the rustic youths of the community of Hamtown they presented a decidedly mature, dignified appearance. They seemed complacently well aware of their musical superiority over their humbler companions and gave themselves plenty of airs.
At intervals about the spacious gym were little open booths where popcorn fritters, salted peanuts, stick candy, apples and oranges, molasses taffy and pink lemonade were sold. In each booth a masked rustic maid presided, keeping a lynx eye on her wares.
After the orchestra had tuned up with considerable scraping, sawing and tooting they burst into the rallying strains of the grand march. Doris heard the sound of the music with patent relief. She had grown more and more uneasy for fear that Leslie might forget her role of silence and blurt out a remark in her characteristic fashion. Anyone who had known her in the past would be likely to recognize her voice.
Doris had suggested that it would be better for they two to dance together the few numbers before the unmasking for which Leslie dared remain. To this Leslie would not hear. She craved freedom to roam about the gymnasium by herself and dance with whom she fancied. She and Doris walked through the grand march together and danced the first number. Then Leslie left Doris, who was being singled out by two or three husky farmer boys for attention, and strolled down the gymnasium, her striped umbrella under one arm.
Behind the fatuously-smiling blonde face her small dark eyes were keeping a bright watch on the revelers. She wondered where Bean and her Beanstalks were and tried to pick them out by height and figure. She decided that a maid in a pale pink lawn frock was Marjorie and promptly kept away from her. When the music for the second dance began she made her bow to a slim sprite in fluffy white who accepted with a genuine freshie giggle.