Carmen Chadwick, on top of Hinpoha, and draped up in Tiny"s clothes, made a truly imposing figure that drew involuntary applause from the rest of the cast, but when Tiny spoke, the weak, piping voice that issued from the gigantic figure promptly threw them all into hysterics.
The real Tiny"s voice was as deep and resonant as a fog horn.
"That"ll never do!" gasped Migwan through her tears of merriment. "That doesn"t sound any more like Tiny than a chipping sparrow sounds like a lion. We"ll have to get somebody with a deeper voice for the upper half of Tiny."
"But there isn"t anybody else as light as Carmen," Hinpoha protested, "and I can"t carry anybody that"s any heavier."
Migwan wrinkled her brows and considered the matter.
"Oh, leave it the way it is," proposed Jo Severance. "They"ll never notice a little thing like that."
"Yes, they will too," Gladys declared. "Anyway, you can"t hear what Carmen says, and we want the folks to hear Tiny"s speech, because it"s so funny."
"But what are we going to do about it?" asked Migwan in perplexity.
"I know," said Katherine, rising to the occasion, as usual, "let the other half of Tiny do the talking. Hinpoha can make her voice quite deep and loud. It doesn"t make any difference which half of Tiny talks, as long as the people hear it."
"Just the thing!" exclaimed Migwan delightedly. "Katherine, that head of yours will make your fortune yet. All right, Hinpoha, you speak Tiny"s lines."
Hinpoha complied, and the effect of her voice coming apparently from beneath Tiny"s ribs, while Tiny"s mouth up above remained closed, was a great deal funnier than the first way.
"Never mind," said Migwan firmly, while the rest wept with laughter on each other"s shoulders, "it sounds more like Tiny than the other way.
You might stand with your back turned while you talk if Sinbad can"t keep his face straight when he looks at you. You"d all better practice keeping your faces straight though. Katherine, you won"t forget to get that gaudy blanket off the Lone Wolf"s bed, will you?"
Migwan, her cla.s.sic forehead streaked with perspiration and red color from the notebook in her hands, directed the rehearsal of her production all through the hot afternoon, until the lengthening shadows on the island warned them that is was time to get back to camp and prepare for the real performance. The stunts were to begin at six-thirty, and would be held in the open s.p.a.ce in front of Mateka, overlooking the river. The Avenue"s stunt was to go on first, as the long end had fallen to them in the drawing of the cuts.
There was a great scurrying around after props after the Alleyites came back from the Island after that last rehearsal. Migwan, checking up her list, was constantly coming upon things that had been forgotten.
"Did somebody get Tiny Armstrong"s red striped stockings?" she asked anxiously.
n.o.body had remembered to get them. Katherine departed forthwith in quest of the necessary hosiery and found one of the stockings hanging out on the tent rope. The other was not in evidence. She was about to depart quietly without going into the tent, for one stocking was all that she needed, when a toothbrush suddenly whizzed past her ear, coming from the tent door. Laughing, she turned and went into the tent, first hastily concealing Tony"s stocking in the front of her middy.
The flinger of the toothbrush turned out to be Tiny herself, who was sitting up in bed with her nightgown on.
"What"s the matter, Tiny?" Katherine asked solicitously. "Are you sick?
Aren"t you going to get up to see the Stunts?"
"Get up!" shouted Tiny wrathfully. "I _can"t_ get up--I haven"t any clothes."
"No clothes?" murmured Katherine in a puzzled tone.
"Everything"s gone," continued Tiny plaintively, "bloomers, middies, shoes, stockings, hat, everything. Somebody has taken and hidden them for a joke, I suppose. I went to sleep here this afternoon, and when I woke up everything was gone."
Katherine suddenly grew very non-committal, although she wanted to shriek with laughter. Oh-Pshaw, who had been sent after a suit of Tiny"s that afternoon, had apparently made a pretty thorough job of it.
"Somebody must be playing a joke on you," Katherine remarked tranquilly, although she was conscious of the lump that Tiny"s one remaining stocking made under her middy. "Never mind. Tiny, I"ll go out and borrow some things for you to wear."
"But there"s nothing of anybody"s here that I can get into," mourned Tiny. "I"m four sizes bigger than the biggest of you. You"ll have to find out who"s hidden my things and bring them back."
Katherine was touched by Tiny"s predicament, but the stunt had first claim on her. She came back presently with Tiny"s bathing suit, which she had hanging on a nearby tree, and a long raincoat of Dr. Grayson"s, together with his tennis shoes. She even had to beg a pair of his socks from Mrs. Grayson, for all of Tiny"s that had not been borrowed were away at the laundry. And in that collection of clothes Tiny had to go and sit in the Judges" box at the Stunts, but her good nature was not ruffled one whit on account of it.
Katherine was still getting Tiny into her improvised wardrobe when a loud hubbub proclaimed the arrival of the boys from Camp Altamont, and at the same time the bugle sounded the a.s.sembly call for the girls. The Alleyites, bursting with impatience for the time of their own stunt to arrive, settled themselves in their places to watch the Avenue stunt.
The bugle sounded again, and the chairman of the Avenue stunt stood up.
"Our stunt tonight," she announced, "tells a hitherto unpublished one of Gulliver"s Travels, namely, his voyage to the Land of the Keewaydins."
The Alley sat up with one convulsive jerk. "Gulliver"s Travels!" That sounded nearly like their own idea.
Then the stunt proceeded, beginning with Gulliver wrecked on the sh.o.r.e of the Land of the Keewaydins. Undine Girelle was Gulliver, and her shipwreck was trully a thrilling one. She finally landed, spent with swimming, on the sh.o.r.e, and was taken in hand by the friendly Keewaydins, who proceeded to show him their customs. The Alley gradually turned to stone as they saw practically the very same things they were planning to do, being performed before their eyes by the Avenue. There was Miss Peckham and the stocking-snake (that explained to Katherine why she had only been able to find one of Tiny"s red and black stockings); there was Tiny herself, and made out of two girls, just as they were going to do it! There was Dr. Grayson, there were all the other councilors; there was a burlesque on camp life almost exactly as they had planned to do it!
The boys and the councilors applauded wildly, but the Alleyites, too surprised and taken back to be appreciative, merely looked at each other in mute consternation.
"Somebody gave away our secret!" was the first indignant thought that flashed into the minds of the Alleyites, but the utter astonishment of the Avenue when the Alley said that their stunt was practically the same, soon convinced them that the whole thing was a mere co-incidence.
"It"s a wonder I didn"t suspect anything when I found that all of Tiny"s clothes were gone," said Katherine. "That should have told me that someone else was impersonating her."
The Alley at first declined to put on their stunt, since it was so nearly the same as the other, but the audience refused to let them off, insisting that they had come to see two stunts, and they were going to see two, even if they _were_ alike.
"We can still judge which is the best," said Dr. Grayson. "In fact, it is an unusual opportunity. Usually the stunts are so different that it is hard to tell which is the better, but having two performances on the same subject gives a rare chance to consider the fine points."
So the Alley went ahead with their stunt just as if nothing out of the way had occurred, and the judges applauded them just as wildly as they had the others. In the end, the honors had to be evenly divided between the two, for the judges declared that one was just as good as the other and it was impossible to decide between them.
"And we were so dead sure that the Avenue would never be able to think up anything nearly as clever as ours," remarked Sahwah ruefully, as she prepared for bed that night.
"I"m beginning to come to the conclusion," replied Hinpoha with a sleepy yawn, "that it isn"t safe to be too sure of anything. You never can tell from the outside of people what they are likely to have inside of them."
"No, you can"t" echoed Agony soberly.
CHAPTER XIII
THEIR NATIVE WILDS
Miss Judy"s hat was more or less a barometer of the state of her emotions. Worn far back on her head with its brim turned up, it indicated that she was at peace with all the world and upon pleasure bent; tipped over one ear, it denoted intense preoccupation with business affairs; pulled low over her eyes, it was a sign of extreme vexation. This morning the hat was pulled so far down over her face that only the tip of her chin was visible. Katherine, stopping to help her run a canoe up on the bank after swimming hour, noticed the unnecessary vehemence of her movements, and asked mildly as to the cause.
Miss Judy replied with a single explosive exclamation of "Monty!"
"Monty!" Katherine echoed inquringly. "What"s that?"
"You"re right, it _is_ a "what"," replied Miss Judy emphatically, "although it usually goes down in the catalog as a "who." It"s my cousin, Egmont Satter-white," she continued in explanation. "He"s coming to pay us a visit at camp."
"Yes," said Katherine. "What is he like?"
"Like?" repeated Miss Judy derisively. "He"s like the c.o.c.k who thought the sun didn"t get up until he crowed--so conceited; only he goes still farther. He doesn"t see what need there is for the sun at all while he is there to shed his light. He"s the only child of his adoring mother, and she"s cultivated him like a rare floral specimen; private tutors and all that sort of thing. Now he"s learned everything there is to know, and he"s ready to write a book. He regards his fellow creatures as quaint and curious specimens, "rather diverting for one to observe, don"t you know," but not at all important. I suppose he"s going to put a chapter in his book about girls, because he wrote to father and announced that he was going to run up for a week or so and observe us in our native wilds--that was the delicate way he put it. He"ll probably set down everything he sees in a notebook and then go home and solemnly write his chapter, wise as Solomon."
"What a bore!" sighed Katherine. "I hate to be stared at, and "observed"
for somebody else"s benefit."