on it, and rightly too, or nobody's home would be safe.
Thank you, Carmel! Yes, I'll take another cup of tea, please! And then I
want to see you do that Sicilian dance before I set off on my travels
again. Oh yes! I'm not going away without!"

Poor Carmel was still feeling too much upset to relish dancing, but Mr.
Bowden pressed the point, and other guests joined their persuasions, so
finally it was decided to give at least a portion of the second part of
the program, and the audience again took their seats on the lawn,
leaving several people, however, to guard the house.

"It's not likely there'll be another burglar on the same afternoon;
still, he might have accomplices about," said Miss Walters. "I shall
never feel really safe again, I'm afraid. We shall all be horribly
nervous for a long time."

Only the most striking items in Part II were selected for performance,
as it was growing late, and most of the guests would soon have to take
their leave. There was an affecting tableau of the parting of the
widowed Queen of Edward IV from her little son, Richard, Duke of York; a
charming pageant of the old street cries of London, in which dainty
maidens in eighteenth-century costumes appeared with bunches of "Sweet
Lavender," and baskets of "Cherry Ripe," and, after singing the
appropriate songs, went the round of the audience and sold their wares.

Noreen, who was the star of the elocution class, recited a poem
describing the sad experience of a typical little waif, and his
reception in the Home. It was a pretty piece, and had been composed
expressly for the Society by a lady who often wrote for magazines.

Then, last of all, came Carmel's Sicilian dance. Miss Lowe had
fortunately been able to obtain the score of the Pastorale, and with
music and costume complete the performance was an even greater success
than it had been on the terrace at Bradstone. People clapped the little
figure, partly for her charming dancing and partly for her pluck in
trapping the burglar, so that altogether she received quite an ovation.

"We shan't forget the 'Waifs and Strays' afternoon in a hurry," said
Lilias, as she tidied her possessions afterwards, for it was _her_
drawer that the burglar had turned upside down in his search for
valuables. "I feel I want to sleep with a revolver under my pillow!"

"If you did, I'd be far more afraid of you than of the burglar!"
protested Bertha. "I know you'd let it off at the wrong person. I don't