ho knows but what she might have burst into
tears, and disgraced herself before the whole band. But the squeeze,
coming exactly at the right time, averted so mortifying a catastrophe.

"My dear friends," began Daisy, catching with unconscious mimicry some
of the rounded tones of her father's voice--"my dear, kind friends!"

"Well, go on," cried Mr. Bob; "that's a swell start! That's the way to
wake them up!"

"Hear! hear!" (This from a dozen places.)

"I have called you togevver," went on Daisy bravely, "so we might enjoy
the travels of Saint Paul, which belongs to the magic lantern Santa
Claus brought me this morning for Christmas, because I'm such a good
little girl. Saint Paul was a kind of a sailor, too, and got
shipwrecked, like Mr. Bob, in an awful storm. I used to know all about
Saint Paul, but somehow I've got mixed up about him since. Perhaps one
of our members will oblige, so we'll know what the slides are about when
we get _w_ound to them?"

There was a profound silence. No one volunteered. Billy Dutton, looking
up from the pirate ship, to which he was adding some finishing touches,
said he was afeared the president would find them a sad, ignorant lot of
ignorpotammusses.

"Then we'll just have to get along without Saint Paul," said Daisy
regretfully. "Perhaps it is as well, too, for Bands of Hope isn't only
for amoosement, but to do good, and help uvvers, and carry the glad
tidings right and left into the darkest corners of the earth."

"Gee-whilikins!" exclaimed Sammy Nesbit, "where's this we're fetching up
to, mates?"

"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, pr