"Guests cost money," said Harry. "But, of course, in a Palace of Delight money must not be considered. That would be treason to your principles."
"We shall not give our guests anything except the cold remains of the Christmas dinner. As for champagne, we can make our own with a few lemons and a little sugar. Do not forbid us to invite an audience."
Fortunately, a present which arrived from their patron, Miss Messenger, the day before Christmas Day, enabled them to give their guests a substantial supper, at no cost whatever. The present took the form of several hampers, addressed to Miss Kennedy, with a note from the donor conveying her love to the girls and best wishes for the next year, when she hoped to make their acquaintance. The hampers contained turkeys, sausages, ducks, geese, hams, tongues, and the like.
Meantime, Harry, as stage manager and dramatist, had devised the tableaux, and the girls between them had devised the dresses from a book of costumes. Christmas Day, as everybody remembers, fell last year on a Sunday. This gave the girls the whole of Saturday afternoon and evening, with Monday morning for the conversion of the trying-on room into the stage, and the show-room for the audience. But the rehearsals took a fortnight, for some of the girls were stupid and some were shy, though all were willing to learn, and Harry was patient. Besides, there was the chance of wearing the most beautiful dresses, and no one was left out; in the allegory, a pastoral, invented by their manager, there was a part for every one.
The gift of Miss Messenger made it possible to have two sets of guests; one set consisting of the girls' female relations, and a few private friends of Miss Kennedy's who lived and suffered in the neighborhood, for the Christmas dinner, held on Monday; and the other set was carefully chosen from a long list of the select audience in the evening. Among them were Dick and his friend, the ex-Chartist cobbler, and a few leading spirits of the Advanced Club. They wanted an audience who would read between the lines.
The twenty-sixth day of last December was, in the neighborhood of Stepney, dull and overcast; it promised to be a day of rebuke for all quiet folk, because it was a general holiday, one of those four terrible days when the people flock in droves to favorite haunts if it is in the summer, or hang about public-houses if it is winter; when, in the evening, the air is hideous with the shouts of those who roll about the pavements; a day when even Comus and his rabble rout are fain to go home for fear of being hustled and evilly treated by the holiday-makers of famous London town; a day when the peaceful and the pious, the temperate and the timid, stay at home. But to Angela it was a great day, sweet and precious—to use the language of an ancient Puritan and modern prig—because it was the first attempt toward the realization of her great dream; because her girls on this night for the first time showed the fruits of her training in the way they played their parts, their quiet bearing and their new refinement. After the performances of this evening she looked forward with confidence to her palace.
The day began, then, at half-past with the big dinner. All the girls could bring their mothers, sisters, and female relations generally, who were informed that Miss Messenger, the mysterious person who interfered perpetually, like a goddess out of a machine, with some new gift, or some device for their advantage, was the giver of the feast.
It was a good and ample Christmas dinner served in the long work-room by Angela and the girls themselves. There were the turkeys of the hamper, roasted with sausages, and roast beef and roast fowls, and roast geese and roast pork, with an immense supply of the vegetables dear to London people; and after this first course, there were plum-pudding and mince-pies. Messenger's ale, with the stout so much recommended by Bunker, flowed freely, and after dinner there was handed to each a glass of port. None but women and children—no boy over eight being allowed—were present at the feast, and when it was over most of the women got up and went away, not without some little talk with Angela and some present in kind from the benevolent Miss Messenger. Then they cleared all away and set out the tables again, with the same provisions, for the supper in the evening, at which there would be hungry men.
All the afternoon they spent in completing their arrangements. The guests began to arrive at five. The music was supplied by Angela herself, who did not act, with Captain Sorensen and Harry. The piano was brought downstairs and stood in the hall outside the trying-on room.
The performance was to commence at six, but everybody had come long before half-past five. At a quarter to six the little orchestra began to play the old English tunes dear to pantomimes.