fastened the fairy
regalia over unspeakable undergarments, and loosened sticky braids of
black or yellow hair into something approaching a fairylike fluffiness.
One second to straighten her own tumbled hair at a mirror, another to
warn her carefully ranged performers in the passage, and Julia was off
to light the hall and open the street door to the clamorous audience.
Opening the performance with a crash of chords from the piano, fifteen
minutes later, she would turn her face to the stage, that the singers
might see her lips framing the words they were so apt to forget, and
manage to keep a watchful eye upon the noisy group of boys that filled
the back benches and the gaslights that might catch a fairy's spear or a
witch's wand.

"Well, we've had some _awful_ performances in the place, but really I
think to-night's was _about_ the worst!" Miss Toland might remark, when
the last dirty little garment had been claimed by its owner, and the
last fairy had reluctantly gone away.

"Well, the mothers and fathers thought it was fine," Julia would submit,
with a weary grin.

"When that awful Cunningham child, with her awful, flat, slapping feet,
began to dance the Highland Fling, I truly thought I would strangle,
trying not to laugh!" Miss Toland, gazing absently over her book, would
add reflectively.

"And the Queen of the Elves in those _dirty_ pink stockings! And poor
Hazel, bursting into tears as usual!" Julia, collapsed in a chair,
dishevelled and rosy, would give a long sigh of relaxation and relief.

"But we don't do the slightest good this way," Miss Toland sometimes
said with asperity. "We merely amuse them; it goes no further. Now, next
time, we will make it an absolute condition that every child has a bath
before coming, and wears clean clothes!"

"But we made that a condition this time, and it didn't do any good."

"Very well. Next time"--flushed at the merest hint of opposition, Miss
Toland would speak with annoyance--"next time every child who hasn't had
a bath will go straight into that tub, I don't care if the performance
doesn't begin until midnight!"

"Well," Julia would concede tolerantly. She very speedily learned not to
dispute these vigorous resolutions. Miss Toland always forgot them
before morning; she would not have considered them seriously in any
case.

"We are the laughing-stock of the city," she would frequently say with
bitterness, upon being informed that more thimbles were needed, or t