second shot the balloon went
pop and shrivelled away with the whistle of escaping gas and shouts of
applause from both children and their elders.

Feeling assured that my boys were quite at their ease and not likely to
balk and act like wild rabbits, as is sometimes the case with children
when they find themselves among strangers, and seeing nothing that they
would be likely to fall out of or into, except a great bowl of lemonade
arranged in a bower that represented a well, we came away, Lavinia Dorman
sniffing in the spectacle like a veteran war-horse scenting powder, and
enjoying the gayety, as I myself should have done heartily if it had not
been for the boys.

I was not worried about their clothes, their taking cold, or sticking
the darts into their fingers, but I was beginning to realize the
responsibility of consequences. What would the effect of this fete be
upon the birthday parties of our village community, where a dish of
mottoes, a home-made frosted sponge cake, and a freezer of ice cream
(possibly, but not always) from town, eaten out-of-doors, meant bliss.

I suppose it is only the comfortably poor who have to think of
consequences, the uncomfortably rich think they can afford not to,
and tired of mere possession, they must express their wealth audibly
at any cost.

* * * * *

Richard and Ian came home about half past six, driven by Timothy
Saunders, who was in a sulky mood. When I asked him, by way of cheerful
conversation, if the Vanderveer grounds did not look pretty, and if he
had heard the band (he is very fond of music), he fairly glowered at me
as he used in his bachelor days, before Martha's energetic affection had
mellowed him, and he began to jerk out texts, his dialect growing more
impossible each moment, so that the only words that I caught were
"scarlet weemen--Philistines--wrath--mammon o' the unriteous," etc.,
until I seized the boys and fled into the porch, because when Timothy
Saunders is wrathful, and quotes scripture as a means of expressing it,
some one must fly, and it is never Timothy.

The boys, however, were jubilant, and began at once to unwrap the various
bundles they were hugging, prizes, it seemed, for every game they played,
that represented enough plunder to deck a small Christmas tree. After
these had been duly admired, with some misgivings on my part, Ian jumped
up suddenly, clapping his hand to his pocket, and coming close, so that
he c