"
Laughter and something like a "hurrah" answered her from behind
the folds of the curtaining tablecloths.
"All right, Mademoiselle Rapunzel," cried Mabel; "turn the gas up.
It's only part of the entertainment."
Eliza, still giggling, pushed through the lines of chairs, knocking
off the hat of one of the visitors as she did so, and turned up the
three incandescent burners.
Mademoiselle looked at the figure seated nearest to her, stooped to
look more closely, half laughed, quite screamed, and sat down
suddenly.
"Oh!" she cried, "they are not alive!"
Eliza, with a much louder scream, had found out the same thing
and announced it differently. "They ain't got no insides," said she.
The seven members of the audience seated among the wilderness
of chairs had, indeed, no insides to speak of. Their bodies were
bolsters and rolled-up blankets, their spines were broom-handles,
and their arm and leg bones were hockey sticks and umbrellas.
Their shoulders were the wooden crosspieces that Mademoiselle
used for keeping her jackets in shape; their hands were gloves
stuffed out with handkerchiefs; and their faces were the paper
masks painted in the afternoon by the untutored brush of Gerald,
tied on to the round heads made of the ends of stuffed
bolster-cases. The faces were really rather dreadful. Gerald had
done his best, but even after his best had been done you would
hardly have known they were faces, some of them, if they hadn't
been in the positions which faces usually occupy, between the
collar and the hat.
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