that such comfort was to be accorded the masculine guests.
Even with such sanction, however, Luella May Spain looked pained at her
father's gay new red suspenders, and I could see that Mr. Todd's striped
shirt was hurting the feelings of Sadie Todd dreadfully, and she and
Luella May returned Billy's gallant salute with the greatest
embarrassment. And in all the buzz I found myself looking anxiously for
Martha Ensley's pale face and dark eyes, but failed to find them.

"This is one place she ought not to have to peep into; here she has the
rights of her citizenship and her motherhood," I said to myself.

But if the Town and the Settlement sat in the seats of the audience,
divided by the walk as were the walls of waters by the dry path along
which Moses led his chosen people out of the darkness of Egypt, such a
division was not noticeable among the performers of the pageant who were
supposed to be in hiding with their costumes behind a tall screen of
shrubs at one side of the schoolhouse, but who bubbled out on all sides.
Charlotte appeared once holding small Maudie Burns in a comforting
embrace and guided her to her mother for some sort of attention to the
very short skirts of blue gingham which were draped with about ten yards
of green crepe paper, while both Harriet and I gasped as we saw Mikey
jauntily hand the Suckling, tightly wrapped in brown swaddlings, into
the rapturous and tender embrace of Katie Moore, who had blue wings
sewed to her small gingham shoulders.

"Great Guns! They've got Sucks in it, too!" gasped Billy. "That child is
too young to educate and Goodloe ought to be restrained from
cradle-snatching like--"

But just here Billy was interrupted and the audience all quieted down as
Mr. Goodloe, in his white flannels and with his gold head ablaze in the
sun, which suddenly shone out fiercely from behind a white cloud which
was sheeting internally with electricity, mounted two of the front
steps of the schoolhouse and held up his hand for silence.

"Mr. Todd," he said with beautiful deference, "will you lead us in
prayer?" There was a perceptible rustle of feeling on the Settlement
side of the walk, for Mr. Todd was one of the parson's deacons, but he
had also been the master workman in the building of the schoolhouse, and
his neighbors were quick to respond to the tribute offered him before
the distinguished men present. He rose, gaunt and grizzled in his shirt
sleeves, but what he said was brief and