r hair.

"I like Betty best, she's so cunning, and she peaked out of the window
just as if she _really_ saw somebody coming," answered Liddy Peckham,
privately resolving to tease mother for some pink roses before another
Sunday came.

Up went the curtain at last, and a voice announced "A Tragedy in Three
Tableaux." "There's Betty!" was the general exclamation, as the audience
recognized a familiar face under the little red hood worn by the child
who stood receiving a basket from Teacher, who made a nice mother with
her finger up, as if telling the small messenger not to loiter by the
way.

"I know what that is!" cried Sally; "it's 'Mabel on Midsummer Day.' The
piece Miss Celia spoke; don't you know?"

"There isn't any sick baby, and Mabel had a 'kerchief pinned about her
head.' _I_ say it's Red Riding Hood," answered Liddy, who had begun to
learn Mary Howitt's pretty poem for her next piece, and knew all about
it.

The question was settled by the appearance of the wolf in the second
scene, and such a wolf! On few amateur stages do we find so natural an
actor for that part, or so good a costume, for Sanch was irresistibly
droll in the gray wolf-skin which usually lay beside Miss Celia's bed,
now fitted over his back and fastened neatly down underneath, with his
own face peeping out at one end, and the handsome tail bobbing gayly at
the other. What a comfort that tail was to Sancho, none but a bereaved
bow-wow could ever tell. It reconciled him to his distasteful part at
once; it made rehearsals a joy, and even before the public he could not
resist turning to catch a glimpse of the noble appendage, while his own
brief member wagged with the proud consciousness that though the tail
did not match the head, it was long enough to be seen of all men and
dogs.

That was a pretty picture, for the little maid came walking in with the
basket on her arm, and such an innocent face inside the bright hood that
it was quite natural the gray wolf should trot up to her with deceitful
friendliness, that she should pat and talk to him confidingly about the
butter for grandma, and then that they should walk away together, he
politely carrying her basket, she with her hand on his head, little
dreaming what evil plans were taking shape inside.

The children encored that, but there was no time to repeat it, so they
listened to more stifled merriment behind the red table-cloths, and
wondered whether the next scene would be the wolf pop