Part 21 (1/2)

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.”