If Martha had plotted and planned a sensation, her success could not have been greater, and for a few hours her spirit soared. Albert and Victoria were handed from one to another, and fortunately did not cry, but treated the matter as something to which they were quite accustomed. (Effie told me with horror, that in their rounds they were fed everything, from candy to lemonade and pickles, and I believe her.) To cap the climax, the Severely Protestant made a little speech, praising “our sister Saunders’ sense of duty in the preservation of two such interesting members of the English-speaking race, so often too lightly crowded out by foreign hordes; we, who through selfishness sometimes take the children nature forces upon us unwillingly, should bow before one who, exempt by age, volunteers in the cause of patriotism.” Scattering applause! _August 31._ Again it is the unexpected that happens! This afternoon, as father and I were chatting in the cool depths of the Garden House concerning the adoption papers about which the town clerk was to call on the morrow, noise of a hubbub was borne on the breeze from the vicinity of the chicken farm. As we listened, sounds separated themselves, children screaming and the piercing voice of a woman shouting being the chief. “Something is the matter at Martha’s,” I cried, running through the side gate, father quickly following. Forced to go more slowly up the steep bank, I took in at a glance the group gathered by the porch before I reached them. A short, thick-set woman with dark hair and a flat face was screaming and wringing her hands and embracing the twins alternately. A yellow-haired man with vivid colouring and a pronounced, drooping beak was gesticulating and waving his hands in the air. Mr. Potowski from next door was also gesticulating and trying to explain something to Timothy Saunders, who had him by the collar and was shaking his fist within a thread of his nose, also beaked and drooping. Mrs. Potowski was endeavouring to loosen Timothy’s hold, her entire family jabbering in chorus from the other side of the fence. While on the stoop itself, apron over her head, shaken both with sobbing and the jerky motion of the patent rocking-chair, sat Martha. Father’s face was stern, indeed, when he reached them. “Stop this noise instantly, every one of you!” he commanded. “I’ll not have such disgraceful doings on my property.” The vociferous men and women began to cringe and protest. “Now, Timothy, tell me what all this means as briefly as you can.”