thread is spun,
The Knight has won his bride,
And now our task is done,
We may no longer bide.
On rainbow bubbles bright,
We fairies float away.
_The wrong is now set right
And Love has found the way!_

[_Curtain._

As Betty finished reading, there was a babel of voices and a clapping of
hands that made her face grow redder and redder. They were all trying to
congratulate her at once, and she was so confused that she wished she
could run away and hide. But the applause was very sweet to shy little
Betty. She felt that she had done her best, and that not only her
godmother was proud of her, but Keith, and Keith's beautiful mother, who
bent from her queenly height to kiss Betty's flushed cheek, and whisper a
word of praise that made her glow for weeks afterward, whenever she
thought of it.

"'And he kissed me once on my soft pink cheek,
And once in my heart of gold,'"

hummed Keith. "Say, Betty, that's mighty pretty. How did you ever think of
it?"

Before she could answer, one of the maids came out with a tray of sherbet
and cake, and the boys sprang up to help serve the girls.

"I know some of my part already," said Kitty, stirring her sherbet
suggestively, and repeating in a sepulchral tone:

"'I'll stir
This hank of hair, this patch of fur,
This feather and this flapping fin,
This claw, this bone, this dried snake skin.'"

"Oh, Kitty, for mercy's sake _hush!_" said Allison; "you make my blood run
cold."

"But I must, if we've only a week to get ready in. I expect to say it day
and night. It's better to do that than to take more than a week, and give
up the camping party, isn't it?"

"It's going to be a howling success," prophesied Malcolm. "When mamma and
auntie and Aunt Mary go into a scheme the way they are doing now, costumes
and drills, and all sorts of impossible things don't count at all. We'll
be ready in plenty of time."

"Especially," said the Little Colonel, with dignity, "when mothah and Papa
Jack are goin' to do so much. My pa'ht is longah than anybody's."

Next morning at the depot, the post-office, and the blacksmith shop a sign
was displayed which everybody stopped to read. Similar announcements
nailed on various trees throughout the Valley caused many an old farmer to
pull up his team and adjust his spectacles for a closer view of this novel
poster.

They were all Miss Allison's work. Each one bore at the top a crayon
sketch of a huge St. Bernar