The old ladies at the Home were delighted to be able to help and also delighted at the excitement of taking part in the entertainment. They voted for the trio who should represent them in the tableaux and generously selected three who were the most handicapped of all of them. One was lame and always sat with her crutch beside her; one was blind, though her fast flying fingers did not betray it; and the third lived in a wheel-chair. They demurred strongly to their companions' choice, but the other old ladies were insistent and the appointees could not resist the fun. Mr. Emerson agreed to provide transportation for them, wheel-chair and all, and Doctor Hancock was to send over a wagonette from Glen Point so that the rest of the inmates of the Home might take advantage of the tickets that some mysterious giver had sent to every one of them. For the inner picture Dicky and two of his kindergarten friends were to be posed, clad in rags.
"It's no trouble to provide Dicky with a ragged suit," said Mrs. Morton. "The difficulty is going to be to make him look serious and poorly fed."
"A little artistic shading under his eyes and on his cheeks will make his plumpness disappear. I'll 'make up' the children," offered Mrs. Emerson.
Most difficult of all were the silhouettes. This was because the children who were to take part were so tiny that they could not quite remember the sequence of the story they were to act out. There were moments when the Ethels were almost disposed to give up the youngsters and try the shadows with larger children.
"The little ones make so much cunninger cats and dogs than the bigger children I don't want to do it unless we have to," said Ethel Brown, and they found at last that perseverance won the day. Here, too, the children's mothers helped with the costumes, and turned out a creditable collection of animal coverings, not one of them with a bit of fur.
"They're another help to your cotton crusade," Ethel Blue told Dorothy.
Grey flannelette made a soft maltese pussy; the same material in brown covered a dog; a white coat splashed with brown spots out of the family coffee pot was the covering of another Fido, while another white garment stained with black and yellow ornamented a tortoise-shell cat. The rabbits all wore white.
As with the butterfly dance so many of the performers knew the minuet that it needed only two rehearsals. The new boy worked in without any trouble and was so graceful and dignified that the U. S. C. boys found themselves emulating his excellent manner.
Helen herself took charge of "The Pied Piper" and so few were the speaking parts and so short and so natural the pantomime that she drilled her company in three rehearsals, though she herself worked longer in private over the manipulation of certain stage "properties," and had one or two special sessions with Dr. Edward Watkins who was to take the principal part.
Friday evening was chosen for the performance. The Rosemont young people usually had their evening festivities on Fridays because they could sit up later than usual without being disturbed about school work the next morning. The special Friday proved to be clear with a brilliant moon and the old ladies driving over from the Home felt themselves to be out on a grand lark. Evidently the boys had done their publicity work thoroughly, for not only did they see a goodly number of Rosemont people approaching the schoolhouse, but, just as they drove up to the door, a special car from Glen Point stopped to let off a crowd of friends of the Hancocks who had come over to see "what the children were doing for the war orphans."