Daisy cleared her throat. Pride and timidity struggled with each other in that eager little countenance. Had it not been for an encouraging squeeze from Mr. Bob, who knows but what she might have burst into tears, and disgraced herself before the whole band. But the squeeze, coming exactly at the right time, averted so mortifying a catastrophe.
"My dear friends," began Daisy, catching with unconscious mimicry some of the rounded tones of her father's voice—"my dear, kind friends!"
"Well, go on," cried Mr. Bob; "that's a swell start! That's the way to wake them up!"
"Hear! hear!" (This from a dozen places.)
"I have called you togevver," went on Daisy bravely, "so we might enjoy the travels of Saint Paul, which belongs to the magic lantern Santa Claus brought me this morning for Christmas, because I'm such a good little girl. Saint Paul was a kind of a sailor, too, and got shipwrecked, like Mr. Bob, in an awful storm. I used to know all about Saint Paul, but somehow I've got mixed up about him since. Perhaps one of our members will oblige, so we'll know what the slides are about when we get wound to them?"
There was a profound silence. No one volunteered. Billy Dutton, looking up from the pirate ship, to which he was adding some finishing touches, said he was afeared the president would find them a sad, ignorant lot of ignorpotammusses.
"Then we'll just have to get along without Saint Paul," said Daisy regretfully. "Perhaps it is as well, too, for Bands of Hope isn't only for amoosement, but to do good, and help uvvers, and carry the glad tidings right and left into the darkest corners of the earth."
"Gee-whilikins!" exclaimed Sammy Nesbit, "where's this we're fetching up to, mates?"
"Silence! Horder! Shut your face! Dry up, there, Sammy!" roared the Band of Hope.
"I was finking," went on the president, confidentially and undisturbed, "why a nice little surprise for papa wouldn't be as good an idea as any. It's an awful long way to Tarawa and back, and papa's never been werry strong since the fever he got in New Guinea, before he married mamma with Mr. Chalmers."