“And so his guest he comforted.
O, wise, good prior, to you,
Who cheered the stranger’s darkest days,
And helped him on his way, what praise
And gratitude are due!”
The pantomime followed the lines closely.
“Wasn’t Dicky cunning!” exclaimed Dicky’s adoring grandmother.
“Dicky was a duck!” exclaimed Helen, who had slipped out to see the pantomime. “We told him what he was supposed to be—a little boy travelling with his father, and that they had to stop and ask for food and that a kind man took them in and gave him a comfy bed. He seemed to understand it all, and he took hold of James’s hand and looked up in his face as seriously as if he were the real thing. He was splendid.”
“All the same I’m always relieved when Dicky’s part is over and he hasn’t done anything awful!” confessed Dorothy, who had come out also. “It would be just like him to say to James, ‘You needn’t give me any bread; I want cookieth!’”
“We tried to impress on him that he wasn’t to say anything—that nobody but Ethel Brown was to say anything; that was the game. I dare say if James had spoken Dicky would have ordered his meal to suit his fancy.”