"Charades?" questioned Lorene. "Were they going to have charades, too?"
"She means tableaux," explained Cherry. "She's crazy about them. They make me cough too much—the lights they use, I mean. Come on, Lorene, sleep with me tonight until Hope comes up to bed. Do, please! It isn't fair for you three to stick in here and leave me all by myself in the other room."
Lorene glanced hesitatingly from one sister to the other, and seeing no opposition, answered, "All right, Cherry, I'll stay with you till the folks go. You don't care, do you, girls?"
"Not for that long," Peace magnanimously replied, for a daring plan had just popped her eyes wide open, and Lorene might hinder its fulfillment. So they separated, and in a few short moments four white-robed figures were tucked snugly under the coverlets, the lights turned out, and the two doors left ajar that the sleepy exiles might hear the strains of music floating up the wide staircase. There was the soft sound of whispered words from bed to bed like the sleepy twitterings of birdlings in their nests, and then silence. Cherry and Lorene were fast asleep. Downstairs the carols ceased, the wail of violin and guitar died away, and the murmur of voices was again borne to the straining ears of the conspirators in the flag room.
"Do you s'pose they have begun tableauing?" asked Allee, after what seemed an eternity of listening.
"Not yet; they have lights. There, that must be one. See how queer the hall looks through the crack of the door? I guess it's time now. Come on, but be awful still."
"It's cold after being in that warm bed," protested Allee as her bare feet touched the polished floor in the hall.
"We'll get some wraps in here," Peace answered, inspired by a happy thought to seize upon two beautiful white opera robes belonging to some of the guests below, and with these heavy garments trailing behind them, they stole softly down the wide stairway almost to the landing, where, out of sight from the company massed in the parlor and adjoining rooms, they could still see the tableaux taking place in the reception hall below.
Fortunately for their health's sake, this part of the program was brief, and had it not been for the very last scene pictured, no one would have dreamed of their presence behind the palings. But it happened that the girls had chosen as a climax for the evening the tableau of the first Christmas Eve; and Hope, arrayed as the angel of good tidings, appeared on the stairs just as Jud touched off the weird red light on the landing,—for neither actor nor servant had discovered the hidden culprits until too late to utter any words of warning or reproof. Startled beyond measure at the sudden glow almost at their elbow, the two conspirators scrambled to their feet and vanished hastily up the stairway as the chorus below took up the song,
"Angels ascending and descending,
Chanted the wond'rous refrain,
'Glory to God in the Highest,
Peace and good will toward men.'"