"That's so," agreed Tom, "there's nothing an audience hates more than to wait everlastingly between 'turns' while whispering and giggling goes on behind the scenes."
As a result of Helen's sternness the butterflies were waiting when the little internationals went off, and, as those of the children who were not to appear again filed quietly down into the audience where they could see the remainder of the performance, waving wings of soft pink and blue and green and yellow fluttered in from the sides. There was nothing intricate about the steps of this pretty dance. There were movements forward and back and to one side and another, with an occasional turn, but the slowly waving hands with their delicate burden of color made the whole effect entirely charming.
When Tom and Roger, jersey clad, stepped on to the stage for the club-swinging act all the other performers were clustered in the wings, for it had roused their curiosity. Evidently Roger was to swing first for he stepped to the front while Tom beckoned to the janitor of the hall who came forward and attached electric light wires to a plug in the edge of the platform. Tom made a connection with wires that ran up under the back of Roger's jersey and down his sleeves and through holes bored into his clubs, and then he stepped forward to the front.
"While Roger Morton is swinging his clubs the lights of the hall will be turned off," he explained. "I mention it so that no one will be startled when they go out."
Out they went, and in a flash Roger's clubs, made of red and white striped cotton stretched over wire frames which covered electric light bulbs screwed to a sawed-off pair of clubs, were illuminated from within. The beauty of the movements as the clubs flashed here and there in simple or elaborate curves and whirls drew exclamations of enjoyment from the audience.
"That's one of the prettiest stunts I ever saw," exclaimed Doctor Hancock, and Doctor Watkins led the vigorous applause that begged Roger to go on. True to his agreement with Helen, however, Roger stepped aside as soon as he was freed from his apparatus and the lights were turned on once more in the hall, and prepared to help Tom.
It was clear that Tom, too, was not going to do ordinary club-swinging. He took up his position in the centre of the stage and Roger brought forward a box which he deposited beside him. The actors behind the scenes craned their heads forward until they were visible to the audience, so eager were they to see what the box contained.
"My friend, Tom Watkins," said Roger gravely, "is something of a naturalist. In the course of his travels and studies he has come across a curious animal whose chief characteristic is what I may be permitted to call its adhesive power. So closely does it cling to anything to which it attaches itself that it can be detached only with great difficulty. So marked is this peculiarity of the Canis Taurus—"
A peculiar grunt of amusement from certain high school members of the audience interrupted Roger's oration. "Canis, dog; taurus, bull," they whispered.
"—of the Canis Taurus," he went on, "that Watkins has been able to train two of his specimens to do the very remarkable act that you are about to see."