one of their army stretchers; the woman was whipped up and placed upon
it; the poles were seized and off they went, carrying that misguided
creature with them through all the gaping, jeering crowd. The last I
saw of her she was hiding her face in the coarse army blanket, probably
'crying her eyes out,' as you would say, with mortification and shame."

"What a joke!" exclaimed Nan. "Poor thing! She didn't see the parade
after all, and I declare she deserved to. That was the time she was in
it though, with a vengeance."

"Look out for this cab, Nan! Be careful. We cross here. Please don't
rush so--I can't keep up with you," pleaded Miss Blake.

The girl gave her shoulders an impatient shrug and drew her eyebrows
together in a scowl of irritation. But her face cleared as she saw
Miss Blake buying their tickets at the box-office.

"Get them good and up front," she begged. "If we're way back we can't
see a thing."

The governess hesitated an instant; then a curious expression came over
her face and she said, deliberately, "Very well, dear! Up front they
shall be."

The house was quite full and Nan thought it a singular piece of good
fortune that there were places left just where she would have chosen to
sit.

"Just think of having come so late and yet being able to get the best
seats in the house," she said, exultantly.

Miss Blake smiled. She understood better than Nan did why the majority
of the audience preferred places that were not so near the stage.

Both she and the girl herself soon forgot everything else in their
interest in the mysterious tricks that were being performed before
their eyes. Of course they knew that all this magic could be
explained, but just at the moment it appeared difficult to imagine how.
A man seems really no less than a magician who can take a red billiard
ball from, no one knows where, out of mid-air, apparently, and suddenly
nipping off the end, transform it into two, each equally as large as
the first. Presently he thinks you would like to have a third, and,
presto! he draws one out from his elbow. Now a white one for a change!
But it is easy enough to get a white one. He opens his mouth and there
it is, held between his teeth. Then he thinks he will swallow a red
one. Pop! it is gone! A moment later he takes it out of the top of
his head.

Nan noticed that as the performance progressed the tricks grew
"curiouser and curiouser," as Alice would say, and the wiza