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“I do wish they’d hurry in; it’s getting late, and everybody’s here and waiting.” She looked at her watch. The suppressed whistle back near the door was gaining volume and insistence.

“Can’t we turn her loose, Girlie?” Weary came up and laid a hand caressingly upon her shoulder.

“Johnny isn’t here, yet, and he’s to give the address of welcome. Why must people whistle and make a fuss like that, Will?”

“They’re just mad because they aren’t in the show,” said Weary. “Say, can’t we cut out the welcome and sail in anyway? I’m getting kinda shaky, dreading it.”

The schoolma’am shook her head. It would not do to leave out Johnny–and besides, country entertainments demanded the usual Address of Welcome. It is never pleasant to trifle with an unwritten law like that. She looked again at her watch and waited; the audience, being perfectly helpless, waited also.

Weary, listening to the whistling and the shuffling of feet, felt a queer, qualmy feeling in the region of his diaphragm, and he yielded to a hunger for consolation and company in his misery. He edged over to where Chip and Cal were amusing themselves by peeping at the audience from behind the tree.

“Say, how do yuh stack up, Cal?” he whispered, forlornly.

“Pretty lucky,” Cal told him inattentively, and the cheerfulness of his whole aspect grieved Weary sorely. But then, he explained to himself, Cal always did have the nerve of a mule.

Weary sighed and wondered what in thunder ailed him, anyway; he was uncertain whether he was sick, or just plain scared. “Feel all right, Chip?” he pursued; anxiously.

“Sure,” said Chip, with characteristic brevity. “I wonder who those silver-mounted spurs are for, there on the tree? They’ve been put on since this afternoon–can’t yuh stretch your neck enough to read the name, Cal? They’re the real thing, all right.”

Weary’s dejection became more pronounced. “Oh, mamma! am I the only knock-kneed son-of-a-gun in this crowd?” he murmured, and turned disconsolately away. His spine was creepy cold with stage fright; he listened to the sounds beyond the shielding curtain and shivered.

Just then Johnny and Happy Jack appeared looking rather red and guilty, and Johnny was thrust unceremoniously forward to welcome his kind friends and still the rising clamor.

Things went smoothly after that. It is true that Weary, as the Japanese Dwarf, halted the Wax-works and glared glassily at the faces staring back at him while the alarm clock buzzed unheeded against his spine. Mrs. Jarley, however, was equal to the emergency. She proceeded calmly to wind him up the second time, gave Weary an admonitory kick and whispered, “Come alive, yuh chump,” and turned to the audience.

“This here Japanese Dwarf I got second-handed at a bargain sale for three-forty-nine, marked down for one week only,” she explained blandly. “I got cheated like h–like I always do at them bargain sales, for it’s about wore out. I guess I can make the thing work well enough to show yuh what it’s meant to represent, though.” She gave Weary another kick, commanded him again to “Come out of it and get busy,” and the Dwarf obediently ate its allotted portion of poison. And every one applauded Weary more enthusiastically than they had the others, for they thought it was all his part. So much for justice.

“Our last selection will be a tableau entitled, ‘Under the Mistletoe,'” announced the schoolma’am’s clear tones. Then she took up her guitar and went down from the stage to where the Little Doctor waited with her mandolin. While the tableau was being arranged they meant to play together in lieu of a regular orchestra. The schoolma’am’s brow was smooth, for the entertainment had been a success so far; and the tableau would be all right, she was sure–for Weary had charge of that. She hoped that Happy Jack would not hate it so very much, and that it would help to break the ice between him and Annie Pilgreen. So she plucked the guitar strings tentatively and began to play.