my hair will look like dried
hay tonight."

Poor Sara Ray was quite overwhelmed when she came up and found what
she had done. Felicity was very hard on her, and Aunt Janet was coldly
disapproving, but sweet Cecily forgave her unreservedly, and they walked
to the school that night with their arms about each other's waists as
usual.

The school-room was crowded with friends and neighbours. Mr. Perkins was
flying about, getting things into readiness, and Miss Reade, who was
the organist of the evening, was sitting on the platform, looking her
sweetest and prettiest. She wore a delightful white lace hat with a
fetching little wreath of tiny forget-me-nots around the brim, a white
muslin dress with sprays of blue violets scattered over it, and a black
lace scarf.

"Doesn't she look angelic?" said Cecily rapturously.

"Mind you," said Sara Ray, "the Awkward Man is here--in the corner
behind the door. I never remember seeing him at a concert before."

"I suppose he came to hear the Story Girl recite," said Felicity. "He is
such a friend of hers."

The concert went off very well. Dialogues, choruses and recitations
followed each other in rapid succession. Felix got through his without
"getting stuck," and Peter did excellently, though he stuffed his hands
in his trousers pockets--a habit of which Mr. Perkins had vainly tried
to break him. Peter's recitation was one greatly in vogue at that time,
beginning,

"My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills
My father feeds his flocks."

At our first practice Peter had started gaily in, rushing through the
first line with no thought whatever of punctuation--"My name is Norval
on the Grampian Hills."

"Stop, stop, Peter," quoth Mr. Perkins, sarcastically, "your name might
be Norval if you were never on the Grampian Hills. There's a semi-colon
in that line, I wish you to remember."

Peter did remember it. Cecily neither fainted nor failed when it came
her turn. She recited her little piece very well, though somewhat
mechanically. I think she really did much better than if she had had her
desired curls. The miserable conviction that her hair, alone among
that glossy-tressed bevy, was looking badly, quite blotted out all
nervousness and self-consciousness from her mind. Her hair apart, she
looked very pretty. The prevailing excitement had made bright her eye
and flushed her cheeks rosily--too rosily, perhaps. I heard a Carlisle
woman behind me whisper that Cecil