"If Mademoiselle really sends you that Belgian baby you may need a special physician for it," he said. "So you'd better stand in with one whose practice isn't big enough yet to take all his time."
He said this to Helen when he appeared with Tom and Della on the evening of the performance and announced that not only did he know his part in the "Piper" but he had brought his violin and would be glad to be a part of the orchestra.
"But we haven't an orchestra," objected Helen. "I wish we had."
"Who's going to play for the dances?"
"Aunt Louise."
"Why can't she and I do something at the beginning? It will seem a little less cold than just having the curtain go up without any preliminaries."
Mrs. Smith proved to be delighted to go over with Doctor Watkins the music he had brought and they selected one or two lively bits that would set the mood of the audience for the evening. So Mrs. Morton and the Emersons and the younger members of the cast were greatly surprised to hear an overture from a well-played violin accompanied by the piano. While the applause was dying away the curtain rose on Helen seated at a desk reading from a blank exercise book filled with Ethel Blue's neat writing.
"This is the report of the Secretary of the United Service Club," began Helen when the applause that greeted her appearance had subsided. She was looking very pretty, wearing a straight, plain pink frock and having her hair bound with a narrow pink fillet.
"Perhaps you don't know what the United Service Club is," she went on, and then she told in the simplest manner of the beginning of the Club at Chautauqua the summer before.
"What we're trying to do is to help other people whether we want to or not," she declared earnestly.