As for me, we didn’t know what to do, because I’d tied on so many pillows to be fat, that I knew I couldn’t get on any one’s dress but cook’s. So we sent Teddy down to ask her if she would be so very kind as to lend us one. We always make Teddy ask for things, because he’s pretty, and we’ve found out that helps. I think cook thought he wanted the dress for himself, for he said she laughed a lot, but anyway she fetched him her best one--green stuff, it was, with red plush trimming. Then we began. It was awful. Ted gabbled so that no one could hear him, and Humphrey had never known his part properly, though I used to run into his room every night after Fräulein had put out the lights and make him go through it. He couldn’t escape me then, but often he was asleep, which was just as bad, because even if you woke him up it was no use--he’d be so stupid. Well, Humphrey seemed to have forgotten everything he’d ever known, and the more I went on the more he forgot until he began to say the “Charge of the Light Brigade” by mistake; at last he turned sulky and wouldn’t speak at all. Violet knew her part beautifully--I will say that--and she spoke it very clearly and slowly, but without the least bit of expression. When she came to-- “With thee I will wander the wide world far, For I love thee, dear Mr. Young Lochinvar,” which was a piece that I’d made up myself, you might have thought she was saying the multiplication table. “Can’t you speak it like you really would to any one?” I said. “I’d never say such a silly thing,” she answered, “because trains always make me sick and you know Mother says I’d be a dreadful sailor.” Well, I told her at any rate she ought to take Young Lochinvar into a corner and throw her arms round his neck and kiss him, so that the people could tell she was pleased to see him; and she did it, because she’s very obedient, but it was just as if she were hugging a signpost. So I said she was a perfect idiot, which I oughtn’t to have done, however silly she was, and she began to cry. Well, I thought we’d better get on to “Dundee.” It begins-- “Sound the fife and cry the slogan, Let the pibroch shake the air With its wild, triumphal music, Worthy of the freight we bear.” We didn’t know exactly what pibrochs and all those things were, but we thought some Burmese gongs and bells of Father’s would do as well, and we’d brought them up out of the case in the drawing-room. But when I came to look on the mantelpiece, where I’d put them all ready, they were gone. Then Violet, who was still crying, of course, because she’d been started off, sobbed out that Fräulein had taken the things back and had locked up the case and was very angry. They don’t belong to Fräulein anyway, so I don’t see what business it was of hers. But there we were in a nice fix.