“I’ve read that he died thinking he had discovered the East,” responded Helen.
“He laid his plans before the Portuguese king, but he found he couldn’t trust him, so he went to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in Spain. They summoned their wisest men to pass on the subject at a council held at Salamanca. For three years they kept him waiting about in uncertainty before they reported to the king that his idea was absurd. Columbus was furious—”
“I should think he might have been.”
“—and he started at once for Paris to try to get the king of France, Charles VIII, to help him. He took his little son with him and one night they slept at a monastery. The prior became interested in Columbus’s story and believed in him and didn’t want the glory of his achievement to go to another country. So he managed to secure for him another interview with Ferdinand and Isabella, and we’re going to see now,” said Tom, turning to the audience, “what happened at the convent.”
With that the curtain fell. When it parted once more a dark curtain across the stage represented the outside of the convent. Ethel Brown recited Trowbridge’s “Columbus at the Convent,” while James acted the part of the Prior; Roger, Columbus; and Dicky, little Diego.
“Those children have a real feeling for costume,” whispered Miss Graham to her neighbor, and then started as she found that it was not her brother-in-law, Dr. Hancock, as she supposed, but Ethel Blue’s father, Captain Morton, who had come in in the darkness.
“How do you do?” he said, smiling at her startled air. “I suppose they made these things themselves.”
“The boys are wearing their sisters’ long stockings and the girls made the short, puffy trunks and short, full coats.”
Ethel Brown’s voice sounded clearly through the darkness though her hearers could not see her.
“Dreary and brown the night comes down,