and studied the hall with delighted eyes. It
was ordinarily only a shabby, enormous, high-ceiled room, filled with
rows of chairs, and with an elevated stage at the far end. But, like
all Santa Paloma, it was in holiday trim to-night. All the
windows--wide open to the summer darkness--were framed in bunting and
drooping flowers, and on the stage were potted palms and crossed flags.
Great masses of bamboo and California ferns were tied with red, white
and blue streamers between the windows, and, beside these decorations,
which were new for the occasion, were purple and yellow banners, left
from the night of the Native Sons' Grand Ball and Reception, a month
ago, and, arched above the stage the single word "Welcome" in letters
two feet high, which dated back to the Ladies of Saint Rose's Parish
Annual Fair and Entertainment, in May. If the combined effect of these
was not wholly artistic, at least it was very gay, and the murmur of
voices and laughter all over the hall was gay, too, and gay almost to
intoxication it was to hear the musicians tentatively and subduedly
trying their instruments up by the piano, with their sleek heads close
together.

Presently every chair in the house had its occupant, and the younger
element began a spasmodic sort of clapping, as a delicate hint to the
agitated managers, who were behind the scenes, running blindly about
with worn scraps of scribbled paper in their hands, desperately
attempting to call the roll of their performers. When Joe, the janitor,
came out onto the stage, he was royally applauded, although he did no
more than move a tin stand on which there were numbered cards, from one
side of the stage to the other, and change the number in view from "18"
to "1."

Fathers and mothers, perspiring, clean and good-natured, smiled upon
youthful impatience and impertinence to-night, as they sat fanning and
discussing the newcomers, or leaned forward or backward for hilarious
scraps of conversation with their neighbors. Lovers, as always
oblivious of time, sat entirely indifferent to the rise or fall of the
curtain, the girls with demurely dropped lashes, the men deep in low
monotones, their faces close to the lovely faces so near, their arms
flung, in all absent-mindedness, across the backs of the ladies'
chairs. And any motherly heart might have been stirred with an aching
sort of tenderness, as Sidney Burgoyne's was, at the sight of so much
awkward, budding manliness, so many shining