Just then Johnny and Happy Jack appeared looking rather red and guilty, and Johnny was thrust unceremoniously forward to welcome his kind friends and still the rising clamor.

Things went smoothly after that.  It is true that Weary, as the Japanese Dwarf, halted the Wax-works and glared glassily at the faces staring back at him while the alarm clock buzzed unheeded against his spine. Mrs. Jarley, however, was equal to the emergency.  She proceeded calmly to wind him up the second time, gave Weary an admonitory kick and whispered, “Come alive, yuh chump,” and turned to the audience.

“This here Japanese Dwarf I got second-handed at a bargain sale for three-forty-nine, marked down for one week only,” she explained blandly.  “I got cheated like h—­like I always do at them bargain sales, for it’s about wore out.  I guess I can make the thing work well enough to show yuh what it’s meant to represent, though.”  She gave Weary another kick, commanded him again to “Come out of it and get busy,” and the Dwarf obediently ate its allotted portion of poison.  And every one applauded Weary more enthusiastically than they had the others, for they thought it was all his part.  So much for justice.

“Our last selection will be a tableau entitled, ‘Under the Mistletoe,’” announced the schoolma’am’s clear tones.  Then she took up her guitar and went down from the stage to where the Little Doctor waited with her mandolin.  While the tableau was being arranged they meant to play together in lieu of a regular orchestra.  The schoolma’am’s brow was smooth, for the entertainment had been a success so far; and the tableau would be all right, she was sure—­for Weary had charge of that.  She hoped that Happy Jack would not hate it so very much, and that it would help to break the ice between him and Annie Pilgreen.  So she plucked the guitar strings tentatively and began to play.

Behind the curtain, Annie Pilgreen stood simpering in her place and Happy Jack went reluctantly forward, resigned and deplorably inefficient.  Weary, himself again now that his torment was over, posed him cheerfully.  But Happy Jack did not get the idea.  He stood, as Weary told him disgustedly, looking like a hitching-post.  Weary labored with him desperately, his ear strained to keep in touch with the music which would, at the proper time, die to a murmur which would be a signal for the red fire and the tableau.  Already the lamps were being turned low, out there beyond the curtain.

Though it was primarily a scheme of torture for Happy Jack, Weary was anxious that it should be technically perfect.  He became impatient.  “Say, don’t stand there like a kink-necked horse, Happy!” he implored under his breath.  “Ain’t there any joints in your arms?”

“I ain’t never practised it,” Happy Jack protested in a hoarse whisper.  “I never even seen a tableau in my life, even.  If somebody’d show me once, so’s I could get the hang of it—­”