A soft laugh went over the audience at this contradictory statement.
"I mean," continued Helen, somewhat confused, "that we mean to do things that will help people even if we don't get any fun out of it ourselves. We want to improve our characters, you see," she added artlessly. "So far we haven't had much chance to improve our characters because all the things that have come our way to do have been things that were great fun—like to-night.
"To-night," she went on earnestly, "you have come here to see a little entertainment that we've gotten up to make some money so that we could send a bigger bundle to the Christmas Ship that is going to sail for Europe early in November. We thought we could make a good many presents for the war orphans but we found that our allowances didn't go as far as we thought they would, although we have a very careful treasurer," she added with a smiling glance at the wings of the stage where James greeted her compliment with a wry face.
"We made a rule that we would make all the money we needed and not accept presents, so this show is the result, and we hope you'll like it. Anyway, we've had lots of fun getting it up."
She bowed her thanks to the applause that greeted her girlish explanation and stepped behind the scenes.
Immediately a gay march sounded from the piano. It was a medley of well-known national songs and in time with its notes a group of children led by Dorothy ran upon the stage. Dorothy stepped to the front and sang a few lines of introduction to the tune of "Yankee Doodle."
"Here we are from Fatherland,
From Russia and from France,
From Japan and from Ireland
We all together dance.
"At home they are not dancing now;
There's war and awful slaughter;
We here in Rosemont make our bow,
Each one Columbia's daughter."
Then a flaxen-haired little girl stepped forward and sang a German folk song and after it she and two other children dressed in German peasant costume danced a merry folk dance. Representatives of the other countries which Dorothy's verses had named sang in turn. Then each group sang its national song, at the end uniting in "The Star Spangled Banner," in which the standing audience joined.
There was a great clapping when the curtain fell, but the managers had decided that there should be no encores, so the curtain merely rose once upon a bowing, smiling group and then fell with a decision that was understood to be final.
"Whatever we do wrong, the thing we must do right," Helen had insisted when she was drilling her performers, "is to have promptness in putting on our 'acts.'"