“In all truth, my dear, I don’t think you could raise enough for the nursery, but no one could approve more heartily than I of the attempt,” Mrs. Garden said. “Haven’t you, really, thought of an entertainment? Because I have! I’ve been thinking of it a good deal lately. Shall I tell you? It’s original. Anything at this time of year ought to be held out of doors, don’t you think? Would it matter that we used our garden? I mean do we seem to emphasize the garden too much? It is so lovely, so big and suitable to almost any purpose.”
“You couldn’t have said anything we’d like to hear much better than that, madrina,” said Mary, slipping into the room behind her mother’s chair and laying her hands on the shoulders which persisted in remaining thinner than the Garden girls liked to see them. “We hoped you’d love our best friend and dearest possession.”
“Of course I love such a garden as that!” cried Mrs. Garden. “Here’s my idea of a nice, perfectly new kind of party: Invite your guests—since it’s to be for charity, sell tickets instead—to meet their friends, of all ages and conditions. Select certain people to be the actors and distribute among them just as many characters as you can; as you can costume and get well taken, that means. Each character would wear a number in a conspicuous place, and wander about the gardens, which would be hung with lanterns and made as pretty as possible in every way. Some of the actors would represent several characters; they would wander about for a certain length of time in one costume, then change and reappear in another. Some of your helpers would have more talent than the others and could enact more rôles. The—I wonder if one should say audience in such a case? The guests not acting would be provided with small pads and pencils, the pads headed with the words: ‘I Met’—followed by numbers down the side of each page, as many numbers as there were characters represented. The guests would write against each number the name of the character—his guess of the character—bearing that number. Prizes would be given for the three most accurate lists in order of merit—first, second, and third prizes, and a consolation prize, if you wished. The actors would be required to enact their parts as well as they could, and to answer questions—trying, of course, to give baffling answers—put by the guessers to elicit their identity. We should alter and add to this programme as we came to experiment with it, I suppose. Don’t you think it might be made perfectly charming? All these prettily costumed creatures wandering around under the lantern-hung trees, singing, reciting, doing whatever the characters demanded done? And mightn’t it be lots of fun?”
The girls, Florimel, too, and Win, now added to the group before the fire, had listened to Mrs. Garden’s description of her idea for a summer evening’s revel without interrupting her, but with glances at one another expressing their satisfaction.
“Madrina, it’s great!” cried Jane, first, as usual, to find her voice.
“It would be beautiful, really beautiful, if we could do it as it ought to be done,” said Mary, doubt and desire in her voice.
“Well, I want to be Lady Macbeth!” cried Florimel, which desire, accompanied in its expression by a jump from her low stool and a pirouette most unsuited to tragedy, raised a shout of laughter.
“We’d call the entertainment ‘the Garden of Dreams,’” Jane announced.
“Janie, what a happy label!” Mary said. “My one fear, madrina mia, is that we couldn’t carry out your lovely programme, but if you train us, I suppose we might.”
“Of course I’ll train you! And take any number of characters myself. Shall we make out a list of characters? Get pencils and paper, Florimel, please, and we could set down the names of the actors—your part of it, girls!” Mrs. Garden was all animation, youthfulness flowed into her and flashed from her. Her children exchanged satisfied glances; already their plot was a success. The advertised object of the entertainment was not their object; the Day Nursery was incidental. What mattered was that their plaything mother, growing dearer to them and more of an anxiety each day, should be kept interested and happy.