d mixed dough for raisin-cake she hadn't yet put in "the
lightenin'." "If we start to oncet there ain't nothin' to harm, an' the
childern's so busy they'll never notice. Moses is asleep. Let's go
right away. My suz! Seems if I couldn't wait to make that poor feller
into a decent man!"

As excited and eager over their own secret as the young folks over
theirs, they seized bonnets and wraps, and, carrying the box between
them, slipped unobserved from the house in the direction of the woods.

Thus it chanced that they did not see what an unusual thing the
stage-driver did; how that, leaving Miss Maitland's parcel at the front
of the house, he drove by a roundabout lane to the back door of the
barn, and there set down, with William's help, two barrel-like tubs,
weighty with broken ice and carefully covered with bits of old carpet.
Similar tubs had sometimes been brought to Marsden by the same
messenger, but only for such occasions as the Fourth of July or the
Sunday-school picnic. Never before for any private function, and the
news of the present arrival spread swiftly through the village,
suggesting to interested parents that, though themselves uninvited, it
might be as well to go along and see what the children were doing!

And it came at last! The delightful hour, the culmination of all this
preparation. At last, at last, the wheezy clock in the church steeple
announced that it was seven o'clock!

Then from out the many homes of Marsden and its by-ways issued the eager
guests. Girls in white frocks; boys in Sunday suits; all uncomfortable
in freshly donned winter flannels--since this was to be a sort of
out-doors party and there must be no afterclaps of croup; and elders in
their second-best attire, worn with an affected indifference of its just
happening so.

Said Mrs. Turner to Mrs. Clackett: "Course we wasn't asked. It's just a
children's party that Johnny Maitland's little girl is giving as a sort
of youngsters' 'infair.' Pa and me thought 'twas better to come along
and see the children got there safe, them not being used to going out
evenings."

To which her neighbor replied: "Yes, we feel that way about our girls
and boy. But I confess, we're sort of curious to know what the 'Corkis'
part of the invitation means. Clackett, he says he guesses Katy meant
'caucus,' but that don't throw no more light on the matter, if it does.
What on earth a lot of young ones want with a 'caucus,' beats me. But
here we are, and