"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 got another idea," propounded Raymonde. "Suppose, instead of having our concert in the lecture hall, we ask the Bumble to let us have it in the barn instead? It would be just twice as coony." "Top-hole! It would be a regular stunt!" agreed the committee. A deputation waited upon Miss Beasley, and found her quite gracious and amenable to reason, both in respect of the choice of plantation ditties and the use of the barn as a place of entertainment. She even vouchsafed the further and most valuable suggestion that they might supply refreshments and charge for them, to help to swell the funds. "You can send an order to the Stores at Gladford to-morrow for cakes and biscuits. Cook shall make you some lemonade, and you may have the oil stove in the barn and supply cocoa at twopence a cup." "May we sell sweets, Miss Beasley?" asked Raymonde tentatively.