rything!"

"Candle shades?--won't it be daylight at six o'clock?"

"Well, then, we'll pull down the window shades," said Tess, undisturbed.
"Candle-light 'll add--"

Aunt Nettie, who couldn't keep still any longer, cut in:

"Will you tell me where you're going to get an orchestra?"

"Oh," said Tess, with an air of patience, "we're going to fix the date
on a band-practice night. I guess they'd be willing to practice on your
porch if we gave them some ice-cream and cake."

"My word!" gasped Aunt Nettie.

"Music always adds so much e'clat to an affair," pursued Tess,
unruffled.

"The band practicing 'll add a-clatter, all right," commented Aunt
Nettie, adding a syllable to Tess's triumphant word.

Missy, visioning the seductive scene of Tess's description, did not
notice her aunt's sarcasm.

"If only we had a butler!" she murmured dreamily.

Aunt Nettie made as if to speak again, but caught an almost
imperceptible signal from her sister.

"Surely, Mary," she began, "you don't mean to say you're--"

Another almost imperceptible gesture.

"Remember, Nettie, that when there's poison in the system, it is best to
let it out as quickly as possible."

What on earth was Mother talking about?

But Missy was too thrilled by the leniency of her mother's attitude
to linger on any side-question--anyway, grown-ups were always making
incomprehensible remarks. She came back swiftly to the important issue.

"And may we really have the party here, Mother?"

Mother smiled at her, a rather funny kind of smile.

"I guess so--the rest of us may as well have the benefit."

What did Mother mean?...

But oh, rapture!

Tess and Missy wrote the invitations themselves and decided to deliver
them in person, and Missy had no more prevision of all that decision
meant than Juliet had when her mother concluded she would give the ball
that Romeo butted in on.

Tess said they must do it with empressement, meaning she would furnish
an equipage for them to make their rounds in. Her father was a doctor,
and had turned the old Smith place into a sanitarium; and, to use the
Cherryvale word, he had several "rigs." However, when the eventful day
for delivery arrived, Tess discovered that her father had disappeared
with the buggy while her mother had "ordered out" the surrey to take
some ladies to a meeting of the Missionary Society.

That left only an anomalous vehicle, built somewhat on the lines of a
victoria, in which Tim, "the co