"There isn't time to get up an operetta, I suppose?" ventured
Fauvette.

"Hardly--in three days!"

"A patriotic performance?"

"Had one only last term, so it would come stale."

"Then what can we have?"

"I know!" exclaimed Raymonde, bouncing up from her chair, and taking a
seat upon the table instead. "I vote we be coons!"

"What's coons?" asked Katherine ungrammatically.

"Oh, you stupid! You know! You sing plantation songs, and wear a
red-and-white costume, and wave tambourines, and that sort of thing."

"Do we black our faces?"

"We can if we like, but it isn't necessary. We're not to be nigger
minstrels exactly. Coons are different. Of course, the songs are all
about Sambos and Dinahs, but white people can sing them with quite as
great effect. I believe the Bumble's got some castanets and things put
away that we could borrow."

"So she has! Bags me the cymbals!"

"Pity nobody can play the banjo."

"Never mind, we shall do very well with the piano."

The committee having decided that their concert was to be a coon
performance, the girls set to work accordingly to make preparations.
All the songbooks in the school were ransacked to find plantation
melodies, and after much discussion, not to say quarrelling, a
programme was at length arranged, sufficiently spicy to entertain the
girl portion of the audience, but select enough not to offend the
easily shocked susceptibilities of Miss Gibbs, whose ideas of songs
suitable for young ladies ran--in direct opposition to most of her
theories--on absolutely Early Victorian lines.

"Gibbie's notion of a concert is 'Home, Sweet Home' and 'Cherry Ripe',
and perhaps 'Caller Herrin' if you want something lively," pouted
Ardiune.

"Yes, and even those have to be edited," agreed Morvyth. "Don't you
remember when we were learning 'Cherry Ripe', she insisted on our
changing 'Where my Julia's lips do smile' into 'Where the sunbeams
sweetly smile?'"

"And she wouldn't let us sing 'The Blue Bells of Scotland', and we
knew it was just because it began: 'Oh where, tell me where, is your
Highland laddie gone?'"

"Don't you know it's highly improper for a school-girl even to mention
a laddie?" murmured Katherine ironically.

"How about the blinded soldiers, then?"

"That's another matter, I suppose."

"Look here--let's take our programme to the Bumble, and get her to
pass it beforehand, and then there can be no criticisms afterwards."

"Right you are!"

"I've