f labelling jars
upon shining jars of marmalade, shone with their most radiant
expression.

Marg'ret and Joe Hammond were constant visitors in the big Costello
house after that. Their father was away, looking for work, Mrs.
Costello imagined and feared, and they were living with some vague
"lady across the hall." So the Mayor's wife had free rein, and she used
it. When Marg'ret got one of her shapeless, leaky shoes cut in the
Costello barn, she was promptly presented with shining new ones, "the
way I couldn't let you get a cold and die on your father, Marg'ret,
dear!" said Mrs. Costello. The twins' outgrown suits were found to fit
Joe Hammond to perfection, "and a lucky thing I thought of it, Joe,
before I sent them off to my sister's children in Chicago!" observed
the Mayor's wife. The Mayor himself heaped his little guests' plates
with the choicest of everything on the table, when the Hammonds stayed
to dinner. Marg'ret frequently came home between Teresa and Alanna to
lunch, and when Joe breakfasted after Mass with Danny and Jim, Mrs.
Costello packed his lunch with theirs, exulting in the chance. The
children became fast friends, and indeed it would have been hard to
find better playfellows for the young Costellos, their mother often
thought, than the clever, appreciative little Hammonds.

Meantime, the rehearsals for Mother Superior's Golden Jubilee proceeded
steadily, and Marg'ret, Teresa, and Alanna could talk of nothing else.
The delightful irregularity of lessons, the enchanting confusion of
rehearsals, the costumes, programme, and decorations were food for
endless chatter. Alanna, because Marg'ret was so genuinely fond of her,
lived in the seventh heaven of bliss, trotting about with the bigger
girls, joining in their plans, and running their errands. The
"grandchildren" were to have a play, entitled "By Nero's Command," in
which both Teresa and Marg'ret sustained prominent parts, and even
Alanna was allotted one line to speak. It became an ordinary thing, in
the Costello house, to hear the little girl earnestly repeating this
line to herself at quiet moments, "The lions,--oh, the lions!" Teresa
and Marg'ret, in their turn, frequently rehearsed a heroic dialogue
which began with the stately line, uttered by Marg'ret in the person of
a Roman princess: "My slave, why art thou always so happy at thy menial
work?"

One day Mrs. Costello called the three girls to her sewing-room, where
a brisk young woman was sm