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“Silence! H order! Shut your face! Dry up, there, Sammy!” roared the Band of Hope.

“I was finking,” went on the president, confidentially and undisturbed, “why a nice little surprise for papa wouldn’t be as good an idea as any. It’s an awful long way to Tarawa and back, and papa’s never been werry strong since the fever he got in New Guinea, before he married mamma with Mr. Chalmers.”

“Wot sort of a surprise h exactly?” asked the vice president with an expression of some doubt.

“Putting up mottoes w ound the walls,” returned Daisy, “and green branches and palm leaves and texes and Merry Christmas, like grandpapa’s in Devonshire, when I was a little tiny winy girl. And papa will be so pleased and happy and surprised that I know he’ll just love it, and won’t never feel tired at all!”

The Band of Hope, who seemed given to singular and inextinguishable fits of laughter, promptly went off into another paroxysm; and laughter with the Band of Hope was no drawing-room performance, no polite titter behind an upraised hand. When the Band of Hope laughed, it rolled on the floor, beat its clenched fists against neighboring backs, screamed, huzzaed, cat-called, kicked pajama legs in the air, and shook the pictures off the walls. Mr. Bob seemed to be the only one who knew how to behave, but even Mr. Bob grew crimson in the face, and choked, and opened his mouth till you could see way down his froat.

“Genelmen,” he said, when at last he had somewhat recovered, “you’ve listened to our h orders, and I’ll h only remind you that them that h ain’t with us is agin us, as Saint Paul says. Back-sliders and goats may return to the bar, but me and the fleecy sheep is agoing to see this thing through, and do our dooty h under the regilations by Board of Trade h appointed. Goats, as I said afore, will kindly rise and step out!”

“We ain’t no blooming quitters,” spoke up Billy Dutton. “Goats, nothing, you wall-eyed old ram! You want to cinch all the texes for yesself, and make a running with our lovely president. But we are on to you, Bob Fletcher, and I voice the sentimomgs of the whole band when I says with Saint John, in the forty-first epistle to the Proosians, ‘Wot you put your fist to, that do it with all yer might!'”

“Aye, aye!” chorused the band with boisterous approval.

“Then h up and work, you devils!” exclaimed the vice president. “Pull out that table, Mack; and you, there, bear a ‘and to ‘elp ‘im, ‘Enery. Set h up the little chair, Williams! Easy with Saint Paul, you, Tommy, or you’ll crack him sure–and lay the whole caboodlum on the shelf, h out of ‘arm’s way! Lively, lads–lively!”

Bob lifted Daisy in his arms, and carrying her to the table, installed her comfortably in the little chair.

“Captain’s bridge,” he said; “and if anything ain’t right, or just h according to your h idears, you sing out to the lower deck, loud and ‘earty; only mind you don’t get h excited and spill orf!”

Daisy’s eyes danced, and her timidity all vanished as she saw the jovial and obedient band grouping together and hotly discussing the proposed decorations. Distances were measured with tarry thumbs. A party of six was told off to climb the cocoa palms across the road; while another, shouting and hallooing like schoolboys, was dispatched to Holderson’s station to get sinnet. There was a noisy wrangle over spelling. “I never seed it like that,” said one, squinting over Billy’s slate, “and I don’t believe nobody else ever did neither.” “For the love of Mike,” roared another, “let’s stick to them words we’re all agreed on, and keep off of that thorological grass!” “Man and boy, I’ve been to sea this thirty years,” exclaimed Mr. Bob with crushing vehemence, “and there warn’t no T in Christmas then, and there ain’t now! C-R-I-S-S-M-A-S, you son of a sea cook, and I know h every letter of it like the palm of me ‘and!”