down on our heads."

"We have Larrabee's; that has the best floor. And as to coming down on
our heads, those old warehouses are stronger than you imagine, Miss
Lois. Have you never noticed their great beams?"

"I have noticed their toppling fronts and their slanting sides, their
bulgings out and their leanings in," replied Miss Lois, nodding her head
emphatically.

"The leaning tower of Pisa, you know, is pronounced stronger than other
towers that stand erect," said Rast. "That old brown shell of Larrabee's
is jointed together so strongly that I venture to predict it will
outlive us all. We might be glad of such joints ourselves, Miss Lois."

"If it will only not come down on our heads to-night, that is all I ask
of its joints," replied Miss Lois.

Soon after seven o'clock the ball opened: darkness had already lain over
the island for nearly three hours, and the evening seemed well advanced.

"Oh, Tita!" said Anne, as the child stepped out of her long cloak and
stood revealed, clad in a fantastic short skirt of black cloth barred
with scarlet, and a little scarlet bodice, "that dress is too thin, and
besides--"

"She looks like a circus-rider," said Miss Lois, in dismay. "Why did you
allow it, Anne?"

"I knew nothing of it," replied the elder sister, with a distressed
expression on her face, but, as usual, not reproving Tita. "It is the
little fancy dress the fort ladies made for her last summer when they
had tableaux. It is too late to go back now; she must wear it, I
suppose; perhaps in the crowd it will not be noticed."

Tita, unmoved, had walked meanwhile over to the hearth, and sitting down
on the floor before the fire, was taking off her snow-boots and donning
her new slippers, apparently unconscious of remark.

The scene was a striking one, or would have been such to a stranger. The
lower floor of the warehouse had been swept and hastily garnished with
evergreens and all the flags the little fort could muster; at each end
on a broad hearth a great fire of logs roared up the old chimney, and
helped to light the room, a soldier standing guard beside it, and
keeping up the flame by throwing on wood every now and then from the
heap in the corner near by. Candles were ranged along the walls, and
lanterns hung from the beams above; all that the island could do in the
way of illumination had been done. The result was a picturesque mingling
of light and shade as the dancers came into the ruddy gleam of the fi