Come along, come along,
Children one and all!
Hasten to the Cosey Corner ere the shadows fall!
Dorothy, Dorothy,
Trouble yet will end.
In the Cosey Corner we shall find the children’s friend!
(Repeat, as they go out, left, followed by boys. Dismal Dumps and Bugaboo Man come forward at centre, Dismal Dumps looking more than usually glum.)
Bugaboo Man (persuasively). Cheer up, old fellow! You certainly got the best of it, as you generally do when you have me to help you!
Dismal Dumps (shaking his head dolefully). That’s all very well, Bugaboo, but what we should do if those children should ever get ahead of us and manage to open that box, I’m sure I don’t know. I can’t bear the sound of bells, and those Sunshine Fairies would be too much for us both.
Bugaboo Man. That’s so; we never could live in the same country with them. Of course not! But there’s no danger! Nobody can open the box but that insignificant little Dorothy Dot, and she can’t without the key. Come on, now; let’s find some one else that we can make unhappy. I heard a woman saying she was afraid it was going to rain. Let’s tell her it certainly will. There’s a big black cloud coming up, now.
Dismal Dumps (brightening a little). And I heard a man complaining of hard times. Let’s go and make them all the harder. We can do it.
Bugaboo Man. Of course we can; we always do. Come on. (Links his arm in that of Dismal Dumps, and hurries him along till in the latter’s effort to keep up he stumbles over a rock and drops the key. Neither of them sees it.) Be careful; you might break your bones sometime over these stones. Hurry, or we’ll be too late. (Exit both, right.)
(Enter Old Woman, left, with basket. Sees key. Stops, and picks it up.)
Old Woman. Well, I never! What careless person has dropped a key, I wonder? I’ll just put it in my basket for safe keeping while I look. (Exit right.)
(Enter Avis, Carol, Dorothy, Frank, Roy, and Brownies, left, on their way to the Cosey Corner. The Brownies are carrying the Sunshine Treasure-Box. They place it at the rear of the stage, with the labelled side forward; then all approach the Cosey Corner, singing; tune, “John Brown.”)