“Is the meeting adjourned, with a resolution to hold the Garden of Dreams festival? Because Abbie was making us grape juice sherbet when I came in. She said she thought we’d be about uncomfortable enough from our fire to want it later on! And we are pretty warm and miserable for people who were chilly, aren’t we?” Mary arose as she spoke and went toward the door to let Abbie know that the hour for sherbet had struck. She laid her hand, with a caressing touch that suggested a benediction, on her mother’s head as she passed her.
“Happy, little Lynette-madrina?” she asked, without pausing for an answer.
Mark stirred in his chair and turned his eyes upon the fire to hide from the others the look that he was himself conscious had sprung into them as he had watched Mary’s betrayal of her sweetness; to hide also the moisture that often rose to them when this happy Garden family reminded him that, though his days were now filled with friendly affection, he had no one whom he might claim his own.
The Vineclad girls, when they heard of the Garden of Dreams, were ready to give the Gardens, mother and daughters, the adulation which grateful children pay—or should pay—to fairy godmothers, who turn the pumpkins of this work-a-day world into chariots, and make the most secret longings of youthful hearts come true. Never before had it befallen them to impersonate the heroines of romance, clad in picturesque garments, trailed blissfully through fairy scenes. It was not a simple task to apportion the characters. Not only must they be given to the persons best fitted physically to assume them, but a perfectly successful impersonation involved mental sympathy between the real and assumed individuals, else bearing and movements would be out of accord. When it came to fencing to ward off the guessers’ questions, which must be answered, betrayals would be inevitable, unless each actor understood the character he, or she, portrayed sufficiently to reply correctly yet misleadingly. The Vineclad boys were dubious about the whole thing; they had a common misgiving among them that walking about in costume would “make them feel like fools.” There were a few who took kindly to the idea, seeing it in its true light, as informal drama, but in the main the older men were impressed into service for the masculine characters, which remained in the minority. Mr. Moulton developed amazing enthusiasm for the dressing-up game, unexpected, and the more delightful in him. He volunteered to assume the rôles of blind Milton, if Mary would walk with him as Milton’s devoted daughter, Mary; Sir Humphrey Gilbert, for whom Mr. Moulton, it seemed, had a secret admiration; Merlin, out of Tennyson’s Idyls, and King Cophetua, with Florimel as the Beggar Maid.
“It’s perfectly scrumptious of you, Guardian!” said Jane. “We never dreamed we could get you into it—and four times! It must be all those plants you work over springing up in you and making you blossom out!”
“A botanist ought to enjoy transformations, an elderly man ought to be glad to be rejuvenated, and we are all secretly inclined to the drama, my dear,” Mr. Moulton answered her. “This notion of Lynette’s strikes my fancy; I leaped to the bait of one night’s youthfulness; that’s all.”
“Nothing to apologize for, Mr. Moulton,” said Mary. “You are to have four rôles, then, and Mark four—Galahad, Alexander Hamilton—we think Mark looks a little like him—Clive Newcome, Kim. And Win will be Mark Antony—I don’t see how anybody can be sure which Roman he is, when togas were so fashionable!—Robin Hood, The Last of the Mohicans, L’Aiglon—in a gorgeous satin costume!—and Oliver Goldsmith. If only you three could be in as many places at once as you can take parts we’d seem to have an army of men! That short Dallas boy, Fred, is to be Little Tommy Tucker, crying for his supper, and Phil Ives will be Barnaby Rudge, with a stuffed crow they have, a pet crow he was before he was stuffed—as Barnaby’s raven, on his shoulder. It will really be good. We have George Washington, tall Mr. Bristead, and Agamemnon, king of men, will be Mr. Hall, because he’s so huge. Goodness only knows what he’ll look like if he wears a Grecian costume! And Mr. Low wants to be Falstaff—with pillows to fill him out—and he will act the part well. There are other men characters. Tiny Nanette Hall is to be Little Miss Netticoat, in a white petticoat! That will really be dear! A straight little candle costume, a red flame wired up on her head, and a fluffy white skirt, like a candle shade! The girls are ready to take as many parts as we can dress.”
“I’m to be Brünhilde,” cried Jane, “on account of my hair. And Joan of Arc, and the White Lady of Avenel, and the Red-haired Girl in ‘The Light that Failed,’ and Lady Clara Vere de Vere, and Snow White—as many more as they like! Madrina is going to teach me the ‘Willow Song,’ and I’m to be Ophelia, but that’s a secret! I’m crazy about it.”
“Most suitable to Ophelia; it promises well for your acting the part, Jane,” suggested Mr. Moulton. “And Mary?”
“I’m to be your Beggar Maid, Cophetua’s,” cried Florimel, not hearing his question. “And Katharine Seyton, in ‘The Abbot,’ and Madge Wildfire, and Cleopatra, and Lady Babbie, in ‘The Little Minister,’ and Topsy—black face! Burnt cork! Goodness, what fun! And a Spanish dancer; Carmen, we’ll call her.”