People were crowding in, it was such a beautiful day, and this was considered the place preeminently for children. People who would have been horrified at the thought of a theatre did not have a scruple about the lecture-room. "We better not stop to look at things," advised Delia. "We can do that afterward. Let's go in and get our seats." They had to go way up front, but they didn't mind that so long as they were all together. They studied the wonderful Venetian scene on the drop-curtain, and the young lad in a supposedly green satin costume, with a long white feather in his hat, who was just stepping into a gondola where a very lovely lady was playing on a guitar. Then the orchestra gave a clash of drums, cymbals, French horns, and a big bass viol, and up went the curtain. A musical family came out and sang. Then there were some acrobatic performances. After that the pantomime. Grandpapa Jerome, in a very foreign costume and a bald head which he tried to keep covered with a black velvet cap, had two extremely tricksy sprites for grandchildren. They were very pretty, the girl with long, light curls, the boy with dark ones. But of all mischief, of all tormenting deeds and antics with which they nearly set grandpapa crazy and threw the audience into convulsions! They took the nice fat boiled ham off the table and greased the doorstep so thoroughly you would have thought every bone in the old man's body would have been broken by the repeated falls. They cut the seat out of the chair, and when he went to sit down he doubled up equal to any modern folding-bed, and he kicked and turned summersaults until the maid came out and rescued him. Then he spied the author of the mischief asleep on a grassy bank, and he found a big strap and went creeping up cautiously, when--whack! and the little boy flew all to pieces, and the old man was so amazed at his cruelty that he sat down and began to weep and bewail when the little lad peeped from behind a tree and, seeing poor grandfather's grief, ran out, hugged him and kissed him and wiped his eyes, and you could see he was promising never to do anything naughty again. But that didn't hinder him from cutting out the bottom of the basket into which the old man was cutting some very splendid grapes. There were not more than half a dozen bunches, and the children ran away with them. The old man descended so carefully, put his hand in the basket, his whole arm, and not a grape. There was none on the ground. Where had they gone! Oh, there was the cat. But pussy was much spryer than the old man, and the audience knew she had not touched a grape.