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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.