week the "Show" was,--in the gymnasium, for it rapidly outgrew the Belden
House parlors, where Mary and Madeline had at first thought of holding
it. It was amazing how much talent Madeline and the committee, between
them, managed to unearth. The little dressing-rooms at the ends of the
big hall had to be called into requisition, and the college doctor's
office, and Miss Andrews' room, and even the swimming tank in the
basement (it leaked and so the water had all been drained off), with an
improvised roof made by pinning Bagdad couch-covers together. All along
the sides of the gymnasium hall there were little curtained booths, while
the four corners of the gallery were turned respectively into a gypsy
tent, a witch's den, the grotesque abode of an Egyptian sorceress, and
the businesslike offices of a dapper little French medium, just over from
Paris.

You could have your fortune told in whichever corner you preferred,--or
in all four if your money lasted. Then you could descend to the floor
below, and eat and drink as many concoctions as your digestion could
stand, sandwiching between your "rabbits," Japanese or Russian tea,
fudges, chocolate, and creamed oysters, visits to the circus, the
menagerie, the vaudeville, and the multitude of side-shows. "Side-show,"
so the posters announced, was the designation of "a bewildering variety
of elegant one-act specialties." Mary Brooks was very proud of that
phrasing.

Mary herself was in charge of the menagerie. "Not to be compared for a
single instant with the animals of the biggest show on earth," she
shouted through her megaphone, accompanying her remarks with impressive
waves of her riding-whip.

Then the white baby elephant walked forth from its lair. It was composed