mes."

"Jack," said some one in a low tone to Mr. Sherman, as the applause died
away for the third time, "Jack, when the Princess Winsome is a little
older, you'd be wise to call in the ogre's help. You'll have more than one
Kentucky Knight trying to carry her away if you don't."

Mr. Sherman made some laughing reply, but turned away so absorbed by a
thought that his friend's words had suggested that he lost all of the
flower messengers' speeches. That some knight might want to carry off his
little Princess Winsome was a thought that had never occurred to him
except as some remote possibility far in the future. But looking at her as
she stood in her long court train, he realised that in a few more months
she would be in her teens, and then--time goes so fast! He sighed,
thinking with a heavy sinking of the heart that it might be only a few
years until she would be counting the daisy petals in earnest.

The curtain hitched just at the last, so that it would not go down, so
with their rainbow bubbles bright the fairies ran off the stage toward
various points in the audience, for the coveted admiration and praise
which they knew was their due.

"Wasn't Hero fine? Didn't he do his part beautifully?" cried Lloyd, as her
father, with one long step, raised himself up to a place beside her on the
stage, where the children were holding an informal reception.

"Show him the money-box," cried Keith, pressing down through the crowds
from the outer door whither he had gone after the entrance receipts.

"Just look, old fellow. There's dollars and dollars in there. See what
you've done for the Red Cross. If it hadn't been for you, Betty never
would have written the play."

"And if it hadn't been for Betty's writing the play you never would have
sent me this heart of gold," said Malcolm in an aside to Lloyd, as he
unfastened her locket and chain from his shield. "Am I to keep it always,
fair princess?"

"No, indeed!" she answered, laughingly, holding out her hand to take it.
"Papa Jack gave me that, and I wouldn't give it up to any knight undah the
sun."

"That's right, little daughter," whispered her father, "I am not in such a
hurry to give up my Princess Winsome as the old king was. Come, dear, help
me find Betty. I want to tell her what a grand success it was."

Lloyd slipped a hand in her father's and led him toward a wing whither the
shy little godmother had fled, without a glance in Malcolm's direction.
But afterward,