Cal Emmett admitted frankly, because shyness and
Cal were strangers. "The Happy Family sure ought to put this thing
through a-whirling. We'll give 'em vaudeville till their eyes water
and their hands are plumb blistered applauding the show. Happy, you're
it. You've got to do a toe dance."

Happy Jack grinned in sickly fashion and sought out his red necktie.

"Say, Weary," spoke up Jack Bates, "ain't there going to be any female
girls in this opera troupe?"

"Sure. The Little Doctor's going to help run the thing, and Rena
Jackson and Lea Adams are in it--and Annie Pilgreen. Her and Happy are
down on the program for 'Under the Mistletoe', a tableau--the red fire,
kiss-me-quick brand."

"Aw gwan!" cried Happy Jack, much distressed and not observing Weary's
lowered eyelid.

His perturbed face and manner gave the Happy Family an idea. An idea,
when entertained by the Happy Family, was a synonym for great mental
agony on the part of the object of the thought, and great enjoyment on
the part of the Family.

"That's right," Weary assured him sweetly, urged to further deceit by
the manifest approval of his friends. "Annie's ready and willing to do
her part, but she's afraid you haven't got the nerve to go through with
it; but the schoolma'am says you'll have to anyhow, because your name's
down and you told her distinct you'd do anything she asked yuh to.
Annie likes yuh a heap, Happy; she said so. Only she don't like the
way yuh hang back on the halter. She told me, private, that she wished
yuh wasn't so bashful."

"Aw, gwan!" adjured Happy Jack again, because that was his only form of
repartee.

"If I had a girl like Annie--"

"Aw, I never said I had a girl!"

"It wouldn't take me more than two minutes to convince her I wasn't as
scared as I looked. You can gamble I'd go through with that living
picture, and I'd sure kiss--"

"Aw, gwan! I ain't stampeding clear to salt water 'cause she said
'Boo!' at me--and I don't need no cayuse t' show me the trail to a
girl's house--"

At this point, Weary succeeded in getting a strangle-hold and the
discussion ended rather abruptly--as they had a way of doing in the
Flying U bunk-house.

Over at the school-house that night, when Miss Satterly's little, gold
watch told her it was seven-thirty, she came out of the corner where
she had been whispering with the Little Doctor and faced a select,
anxious-eyed audience. Even Weary was not as much at ease as he woul