ght-gown permitted,
and they retired to their well-earned repose.

Then Thorny, looking much excited, appeared to make the following
request: "As one of the actors in the next piece is new to the business,
the company must all keep as still as mice, and not stir till I give the
word. It's perfectly splendid! so don't you spoil it by making a row."

"What do you suppose it is?" asked every one, and listened with all
their might to get a hint, if possible. But what they heard only whetted
their curiosity and mystified them more and more. Bab's voice cried in a
loud whisper, "Isn't Ben beautiful?" Then there was a thumping noise,
and Miss Celia said, in an anxious tone, "Oh, do be careful," while Ben
laughed out as if he was too happy to care who heard him, and Thorny
bawled "Whoa!" in a way which would have attracted attention if Lita's
head had not popped out of her box, more than once, to survey the
invaders of her abode, with a much astonished expression.

"Sounds kind of circusy, don't it?" said Sam to Billy, who had come out
to receive the compliments of the company and enjoy the tableau at a
safe distance.

"You just wait till you see what's coming. It beats any circus I ever
saw," answered Billy, rubbing his hands with the air of a man who had
seen many instead of but one.

"Ready! Be quick and get out of the way when she goes off!" whispered
Ben, but they heard him and prepared for pistols, rockets or
combustibles of some sort, as ships were impossible under the
circumstances, and no other "She" occurred to them.

A unanimous "O-o-o-o!" was heard when the curtain rose, but a stern
"Hush!" from Thorny kept them mutely staring with all their eyes at the
grand spectacle of the evening. There stood Lita with a wide flat saddle
on her back, a white head-stall and reins, blue rosettes in her ears,
and the look of a much-bewildered beast in her bright eyes. But who the
gauzy, spangled, winged creature was, with a gilt crown on its head, a
little bow in its hand, and one white slipper in the air, while the
other seemed merely to touch the saddle, no one could tell for a minute,
so strange and splendid did the apparition appear. No wonder Ben was not
recognized in this brilliant disguise, which was more natural to him
than Billy's blue flannel or Thorny's respectable garments. He had so
begged to be allowed to show himself "just once," as he used to be in
the days when "father" tossed him up on the bare-backed old G