nforced estrangement from Joe Hammond. Mrs.
Costello was almost as much distressed as the children, and excited and
mutinous argument held the Costello dinner-table that night. The Mayor,
his wife noticed, paid very close attention to the conversation, but he
did not allude to it until they were alone.

"So Hammond'll take no favors from me, Mollie?"

"I suppose that's it, Frank. Perhaps he's been nursing a grudge all
these weeks. But it's cruel hard on the children. From his comin' back
this way, I don't doubt he's out of work, and where Marg'ret'll get her
white dress from now, I don't know!"

"Well, if he don't provide it, Tess'll recite the salutation," said the
Mayor, with a great air of philosophy. But a second later he added,
"You couldn't have it finished up, now, and send it to the child on the
chance?"

His wife shook her head despondently, and for several days went about
with a little worried look in her bright eyes, and a constant dread of
the news that Marg'ret Hammond had dropped out of the exhibition.
Marg'ret was sad, the little girls said, and evidently missing them as
they missed her, but up to the very night of the dress rehearsal she
gave no sign of worry on the subject of a white dress.

Mrs. Costello had offered her immense parlors for the last rehearsal of
the chief performers in the plays and tableaux, realizing that even the
most obligingly blind of Mother Superiors could not appear to ignore
the gathering of some fifty girls in their gala dresses in the convent
hall, for this purpose. Alanna and Teresa were gloriously excited over
the prospect, and flitted about the empty rooms on the evening
appointed, buzzing like eager bees.

Presently a few of the nuns arrived, escorting a score of little girls,
and briskly ready for an evening of serious work. Then some of the
older girls, carrying their musical instruments, came in laughing.
Laughter and talk began to make the big house hum, the nuns ruling the
confusion, gathering girls into groups, suppressing the hilarity that
would break out over and over again, and anxious to clear a corner and
begin the actual work. A tall girl, leaning on the piano, scribbled a
crude programme, murmuring to the alert-faced nun beside her as she
wrote:

"Yes, Sister, and then the mandolins and guitars; yes, Sister, and then
Mary Cudahy's recitation; yes, Sister. Is that too near Loretta's song?
All right, Sister, the French play can go in between, and then L