Mr. Vanderveer picked up a bow and dart to illustrate the game, aimed at a balloon, the arrow glanced off, but at the second shot the balloon went pop and shrivelled away with the whistle of escaping gas and shouts of applause from both children and their elders. Feeling assured that my boys were quite at their ease and not likely to balk and act like wild rabbits, as is sometimes the case with children when they find themselves among strangers, and seeing nothing that they would be likely to fall out of or into, except a great bowl of lemonade arranged in a bower that represented a well, we came away, Lavinia Dorman sniffing in the spectacle like a veteran war-horse scenting powder, and enjoying the gayety, as I myself should have done heartily if it had not been for the boys. I was not worried about their clothes, their taking cold, or sticking the darts into their fingers, but I was beginning to realize the responsibility of consequences. What would the effect of this fête be upon the birthday parties of our village community, where a dish of mottoes, a home-made frosted sponge cake, and a freezer of ice cream (possibly, but not always) from town, eaten out-of-doors, meant bliss. I suppose it is only the comfortably poor who have to think of consequences, the uncomfortably rich think they can afford not to, and tired of mere possession, they must express their wealth audibly at any cost. * * * * * Richard and Ian came home about half past six, driven by Timothy Saunders, who was in a sulky mood. When I asked him, by way of cheerful conversation, if the Vanderveer grounds did not look pretty, and if he had heard the band (he is very fond of music), he fairly glowered at me as he used in his bachelor days, before Martha's energetic affection had mellowed him, and he began to jerk out texts, his dialect growing more impossible each moment, so that the only words that I caught were "scarlet weemen--Philistines--wrath--mammon o' the unriteous," etc., until I seized the boys and fled into the porch, because when Timothy Saunders is wrathful, and quotes scripture as a means of expressing it, some one must fly, and it is never Timothy. The boys, however, were jubilant, and began at once to unwrap the various bundles they were hugging, prizes, it seemed, for every game they played, that represented enough plunder to deck a small Christmas tree. After these had been duly admired, with some misgivings on my part, Ian jumped up suddenly, clapping his hand to his pocket, and coming close, so that he could rest upon my knee, he began pulling out shining new dimes and quarters, until his hands, moist and trembling with excitement, could hold no more, and he poured the coins into my lap. "Count them please, Barbara, vely quick, 'cause I can't say so many," he begged, standing with his curly head a little on one side, and his eyes flashing with eagerness.