None of the family partook with their guests except Rhoda Jane; they would eat afterwards; and Mrs. Lightcap busied herself now in waiting upon the table; filling the tea and coffee cups in the shed where the cooking stove stood during the months of the year when its heat was objectionable in the house. "I don't know as we've earned our supper, Mis' Lightcap," remarked one of the girls, stirring her tea; "we hain't begun to git all them rags sewed up yet." "Well, then, I'll just set you to work again as soon as you're done eatin'; that'll do just as well; folks don't always pay in advance, you know." "And if we don't get through 'fore the boys come we'll make them help," said Rhoda Jane. "What boys?" queried Mildred; whereat several of the girls giggled. "Why the fellows, of course," laughed Miss Lightcap; "the boys is what we mostly call 'em; though some of 'em's pretty old, I should judge, for that." "Yes, there's Rocap Stubblefield, must be thirty at least," said one. "And Nick Ransquattle's twenty-five if he's a day," remarked another. "Well, the rest's young enough," said Mrs. Lightcap. "Pass that cake there, Rhoda Jane. There's my Gotobed just turned twenty-one, and York Mocker, and Wallace Ormsby, and Claudina's brother Will's all younger by some months or a year or so." The meal concluded, the work went on quite briskly again, Mildred catching now and then a whispered word or two about the desirableness of getting through with it in time to have some fun; but the raw material for several more balls still remained in the basket when "the boys" began to come. Gotobed was naturally among the first. He was quite "slicked up," as Rhoda Jane elegantly expressed it, though his toilet had been made under difficulties. The only legitimate way of reaching the second story and his Sunday clothes, was by a stairway leading up from the front room, where the girls were. The windows of his bedroom, however, looked out upon the leanto which formed the kitchen part of the building and whose roof was not many feet higher than that of the shed. Watching his opportunity for doing so unseen, he climbed upon the shed, gained the roof of the leanto, and entered his room by the window. There was nothing of the dandy about the honest fellow, yet somehow dressing was a slow business with him to-night; he stood before a little square of looking-glass hanging on the wall, tying and retying his cravat till it was too dark to see, then giving up in sheer despair went down over the roof as he had come, and sought his mother, who, with the help of Emmaretta and Minerva, was washing dishes in the kitchen. "My land!" she exclaimed, as he came in, "what a time you've been up there. I never knowed you to take half as long to dress afore." "My fingers are all thumbs," he said, a hot flush overspreading his sunburnt face, "I can't tie this decent nohow at all."