n to arrive, and the wide grounds were gay
with children in dainty summer costumes and bright silken sashes.
Musicians were stationed in an arbor, and their instruments sent forth
tripping waltzes and polkas, and the children danced, looking like
fairies as they floated over the velvet grass. When the beautiful old
Virginia reel was announced, even Cynthia was led out, Mr. Dean himself,
a grand gentleman with stately manners and a long brown beard, showing
her the steps. Cynthia felt as if she had been dancing with the
President. Cinderella at the ball was not less delighted, and this
little Cinderella, too, had a misgiving now and then about to-morrow,
when she must go home to the housework and the boarders and the
gathering of beans for dinner. Yet that should not spoil the present
pleasure. Cynthia had never studied philosophy, but she knew enough not
to fret foolishly about a trouble in the future when something agreeable
was going on now.

In her mother's little well-worn Bible--one of her few
treasures--Cynthia had seen this verse heavily underscored: "Take
therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought
for the things of itself." She did not know what it meant. She would
know some day.

I cannot tell you about the supper, so delicious with its flavor of all
that was sweet and fine, and the open-air appetite the children brought
to it.

After supper came the fireworks. They were simply bewildering. Lulu, the
staunch little friend who had gone to Cynthia's in the morning, speedily
found her out, and was in a whirl of joy that she was there.

"How did you get away?" she whispered.

"Oh, Mrs. Dean came after me herself," returned Cynthia, "And Aunt Kate
couldn't say no to _her_."

Lulu gave Cynthia's hand a squeeze of sympathy.

"What made you bring your mamma's shawl?" asked Cynthia, as she noticed
that Lulu was encumbered with a plaid shawl of the heaviest woolen,
which she kept on her arm.

"Malaria," returned the child. "Mamma's _so_ afraid of it and she said
if I felt the teentiest bit of a chill I must wrap myself up. Horrid old
thing! I hate to lug it around with me. S'pose we sit on it, Cynthy."

They arranged it on the settee, and complacently seated themselves to
enjoy the rockets, which soared in red and violet and silvery stars to
the sky, then fell suddenly down and went out like lamps in a puff of
wind.

Suddenly there was a stir, a shriek, a chorus of screams followi