The Happy Family looked at one another distressfully.
“By golly,” Slim gulped, “you can just tell the schoolma’am to go plumb—” (Weary faced him suddenly, his brown hair running rivulets) “and ask the Old Man,” finished Slim hurriedly. “He’s fifteen pounds fatter’n I be.”
“Go tell her yourself,” said Weary, appeased. “I promised her you’d all be there on time, if I had to hog-tie the whole bunch and haul yuh over in the hayrack.” He dried his face and hands leisurely and regarded the solemn group. “Oh, mamma! you’re sure a nervy-looking bunch uh dogies. Yuh look like—”
“Maybe you’ll hog-tie the whole bunch,” Jack Bates observed irritably, “but if yuh do, you’ll sure be late to meeting, sonny!”
The Happy Family laughed feeble acquiescence.
“I won’t need to,” Weary told them blandly. “You all gave the schoolma’am leave to put down your names, and its up to you to make good. If yuh haven’t got nerve enough to stay in the game till the deck’s shuffled yuh hadn’t any right to buy a stack uh chips.”
“Yeah—that’s right,” Cal Emmett admitted frankly, because shyness and Cal were strangers. “The Happy Family sure ought to put this thing through a-whirling. We’ll give ’em vaudeville till their eyes water and their hands are plumb blistered applauding the show. Happy, you’re it. You’ve got to do a toe dance.”
Happy Jack grinned in sickly fashion and sought out his red necktie.
“Say, Weary,” spoke up Jack Bates, “ain’t there going to be any female girls in this opera troupe?”
“Sure. The Little Doctor’s going to help run the thing, and Rena Jackson and Lea Adams are in it—and Annie Pilgreen. Her and Happy are down on the program for ‘Under the Mistletoe’, a tableau—the red fire, kiss-me-quick brand.”
“Aw gwan!” cried Happy Jack, much distressed and not observing Weary’s lowered eyelid.
His perturbed face and manner gave the Happy Family an idea. An idea, when entertained by the Happy Family, was a synonym for great mental agony on the part of the object of the thought, and great enjoyment on the part of the Family.
“That’s right,” Weary assured him sweetly, urged to further deceit by the manifest approval of his friends. “Annie’s ready and willing to do her part, but she’s afraid you haven’t got the nerve to go through with it; but the schoolma’am says you’ll have to anyhow, because your name’s down and you told her distinct you’d do anything she asked yuh to. Annie likes yuh a heap, Happy; she said so. Only she don’t like the way yuh hang back on the halter. She told me, private, that she wished yuh wasn’t so bashful.”
“Aw, gwan!” adjured Happy Jack again, because that was his only form of repartee.
“If I had a girl like Annie—”
“Aw, I never said I had a girl!”
“It wouldn’t take me more than two minutes to convince her I wasn’t as scared as I looked. You can gamble I’d go through with that living picture, and I’d sure kiss—”
“Aw, gwan! I ain’t stampeding clear to salt water ’cause she said ‘Boo!’ at me—and I don’t need no cayuse t’ show me the trail to a girl’s house—”
At this point, Weary succeeded in getting a strangle-hold and the discussion ended rather abruptly—as they had a way of doing in the Flying U bunk-house.
Over at the school-house that night, when Miss Satterly’s little, gold watch told her it was seven-thirty, she came out of the corner where she had been whispering with the Little Doctor and faced a select, anxious-eyed audience. Even Weary was not as much at ease as he would have one believe, and for the others—they were limp and miserable.
She went straight at her subject. They all knew what they were there for, she told them, and her audience looked her unwinkingly in the eye. They did not know what they were there for, but they felt that they were prepared for the worst. Cal Emmett went mentally over the only “piece” he knew, which he thought he might be called upon to speak. It was the one beginning, according to Cal’s version:
Twinkle, Twinkle little star,
What in thunder are you at?
There were thirteen verses, and it was not particularly adapted to a Christmas entertainment.
The schoolma’am went on explaining. There would be tableaux, she said (whereat Happy Jack came near swallowing his tongue) and the Jarley Wax-works.
“What’re them?” Slim, leaning awkwardly forward and blinking up at her, interrupted stolidly. Everyone took advantage of the break and breathed deeply.
The schoolma’am told them what were the Jarley Wax-works, and even reverted to Dickens and gave a vivid sketch of the original Mrs. Jarley. The audience finally understood that they would represent wax figures of noted characters, would stand still and let Mrs. Jarley talk about them—without the satisfaction of talking back—and that they would be wound up at the psychological moment, when they would be expected to go through a certain set of motions alleged to portray the last conscious acts of the characters they represented.
The schoolma’am sat down sidewise upon a desk, swung a neat little foot unconventionally and grew confidential, and the Happy Family knew they were in for it.
“Will Davidson” (which was Weary) “is the tallest fellow in the lot, so he must be the Japanese Dwarf and eat poisoned rice out of a chopping bowl, with a wooden spoon—the biggest we can find,” she announced authoritatively, and they grinned at Weary.
“Mr. Bennett,” (which was Chip) “you can assume a most murderous expression, so we’ll allow you to be Captain Kidd and threaten to slay your Little Doctor with a wooden sword—if we can’t get hold of a real one.”
“Thanks,” said Chip, with doubtful gratitude.
“Mr. Emmett, we’ll ask you to be Mrs. Jarley and deliver the lectures.”
When they heard that the Happy Family howled derision at Cal, who got red in the face in spite of himself. The worst was over. The victims scented fun in the thing and perked up, and the schoolma’am breathed relief, for she knew the crowd. Things would go with a swing, after this, and success was, barring accidents, a foregone conclusion.
Through all the clatter and cross-fire of jibes Happy Jack sat, nervous and distrait, in the seat nearest the door and farthest from Annie Pilgreen. The pot-bellied stove yawned red-mouthed at him, a scant three feet away. Someone coming in chilled with the nipping night air had shoveled in coal with lavish hand, so that the stove door had to be thrown open as the readiest method of keeping the stove from melting where it stood. Its body, swelling out corpulently below the iron belt, glowed red; and Happy Jack’s wolf-skin overcoat was beginning to exhale a rank, animal odor. It never occurred to him that he might change his seat; he unbuttoned the coat absently and perspired.
He was waiting to see if the schoolma’am said anything about “Under the Mistletoe” with red fire—and Annie Pilgreen. If she did, Happy Jack meant to get out of the house with the least possible delay, for he knew well that no man might face the schoolma’am’s direct gaze and refuse to do her bidding,
So far the Jarley Wax-works held the undivided attention of all save Happy Jack; to him there were other things more important. Even when he was informed that he must be the Chinese Giant and stand upon a coal-oil box for added height, arrayed in one of the big-flowered calico curtains which Annie Pilgreen said she could bring, he was apathetic. He would be required to swing his head slowly from side to side when wound up—very well, it looked easy enough. He would