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§ 5

"He's worse than an opera-singer; us from the consequences. I wonder if infinitely," he lamented. "I can't be you know that I firmly believe that lieve you realize how very serious it is. there is nothing you cannot do." I 've invited everybody of any importance in this town to that service. We 're going to sing the Gretchininoff Magnificat, the first time in America. Not even the Russian cathedral has done it. Wilfred Reginald has a solo; there 's an A in Alt, and nobody can take it but him. Miss Hanson, if he does n't sing, it simply can't be done. I 've already invited them all, and most of them have accepted. It's a musical event."

"If it's as bad as that," said Miss Hanson, smiling, "I can recall the invitations and postpone the dance.”

"And put all their nerves on edge!" he cried. "I should never live through it."

"Very well, then, I 'll send the invitation," concluded Miss Hanson, wearily.

The head-master interrupted in a firm, clear voice:

"I've promised Beecham," he said, "that that child should not come here again."

"If she comes again," said the youngest master, "I shall not answer for the consequences.'

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Dr. Sinclair rose.

"Mr. Beecham," he said with great dignity, "it is evident to me that you are entirely out of sympathy with the musical side of this school, and I wish to remind you that the sole reason for its existence is to supply the soprano voices of the cathedral choir." He turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

There was an uncomfortable pause. "Well, invite her," said the headmaster at last. "All I can do, Miss Hanson, is to appeal to you to deliver

His confidence in Miss Hanson was by no means unfounded, but in the matter of Queenie she felt herself to be at a distinct disadvantage. As time went on, and no solution of the difficulty came to view, the youngest master became abandoned enough to pray that the child might be taken violently ill at the last moment and be unable to come.

At last, however, Miss Hanson rose to the occasion, and beaming with pride, she called the youngest master into her sitting-room.

"I think I have solved the problem," she announced to him. "I am going to run a dark horse. Miss Van Lennep called here this afternoon with her little niece Marcia-"

"Miss Van Lennep!" cried the young man. Miss Van Lennep was the dread Miss Van Lennep of the ladies' committee appointed to oversee the affairs of the school, and as the school stood in awe of the ladies' committee, and the ladies' committee stood in awe of Miss Van Lennep, she was a very terrible person indeed.

"Yes, Miss Van Lennep," said Miss Hanson. "I persuaded her to bring Marcia to the dance."

"Is she your dark horse?" he inquired. "Marcia, I mean."

"If a dark horse can be so altogether lovely. I'm expecting Queenie to be what the boys call a 'frost' beside her. She will captivate them. Then, Marcia has been beautifully brought up. The difficulty with Queenie, of course, was her unfortunate background, her total lack of any sort of bringing up. Now,

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"But how did you do it?" asked the But though he looked forward to the master, with admiration.

"It took tact," Miss Hanson went on. "It was a distinct concession on the part of Miss Van Lennep. I assured her that the tone of the school was much too high for anything to happen which could contaminate Marcia in any way."

dance with diminished apprehension, he was not able to banish altogether the nervous strain of his waiting.

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"If only it will work!" said the to dress for the dance. The costume master.

"Oh, it will, it will," cried Miss Hanson. "You have only to see her."

was to be, as on all formal occasions, white duck knickerbockers, blue jacket, patent-leather shoes, Eton collar,

and dark-purple necktie. When the youngest master made his tour of the dormitories, he found the boys getting into these things in every stage of dress and undress. The hair of every one of them was plastered tight against his skull with the application of much water.

The curtains of Wilfred Reginald's alcove remained discreetly closed. Presently, however, he came forth resplendent, his necktie and socks screaming at each other in one glorious conflict of strident color. His cheeks were scarlet, and his throat was hot and dry, with his consciousness of the splendor of his garments.

"Look ut!" yelled Carson. "Look ut Wilfurd Reg'nuld in his long britches!"

There was a wild scramble to see the gorgeous apparition. Wilfred Reginald greeted them with a magnificent look of scornful indifference. Assuming a careless air and whistling a tune, he advanced debonairly toward the youngest master, who had seated himself on the radiator at the end of the dormitory.

"I expect it will be a very nice dance, don't you, sir?" he inquired, with the nonchalance of one to whom such things are trivial daily episodes.

The master's answer was drowned in a babel of sound. Up and down the dormitory taunting voices, raised to an exaggerated falsetto of affectation, carried on an imaginary conversation from alcove to alcove.

"Oh, yeh-yuss, a very nice dawnce! Chawmed, I'm shuah. Such chawming britches!"

Society was assembled and ranged on the rows of chairs lining the walls of a gymnasium rendered festive for the occasion with bunting and banners.

Lights shaded with crape paper flooded the scene with a golden glow. Society was composed chiefly of the parents of the boys and the little guests whom the boys had invited. The more distinguished members of it were gathered at the end of the room nearest the orchestra, and centered about the dean of the cathedral, who sat by his sisters, the Misses Beresford, and looked very handsome and distinguished in his clericals. The great Miss Van Lennep had entered late, with her little niece in tow, and a place was made for her in this group.

"Oh, you darling!" cried the Misses Beresford in duet at the sight of Marcia, and leaning impulsively forward, they gave her a collective kiss.

The child was lovely. A delicate flush lay warm upon the curve of her cheek. Her wistful mouth, with its half-parted lips, was as rosy and delicate as the petals of a flower. Her melting blue eyes shone starry below the waves of maize-colored hair lying finer than silken floss upon her forehead.

An agreeable little curl fell above each shyly shrinking ear, and a cluster of still lovelier ones was gathered at the nape of her neck. She wore a Kate Greenaway gown of pale-yellow silk, with impossible little puffs at the shoulders pretending they were sleeves, and leaving all the loveliness of her dimpled arms to the delectation of a ravished world. Her hands were incased in the most absurd little white kid gloves imaginable. In all her innocence and fragility, the Victorian era would have claimed her for its own. She dropped a curtsy to the dean's sisters that went straight to their hearts.

When the youngest master saw Marcia, he crossed the room to Miss Hanson and took her hands in his.

"Miss Hanson," he cried enthusiastically, "you are wonderful!"

place the fixed smile of presentation. The orchestra plunged into a rollick

"If the boys feel the same way about ing one-step. her," she said, smiling.

"They 're sure to," he said. "Poor Queenie does n't stand the ghost of a show." They looked down the hall to where Queenie sat blissfully self-conscious in the brave finery of a girl ten years older than herself, a spit curl of her red-gold hair curling as stiff as a spring upon her forehead, and a lump of it gathered into a bronze potato over each of her ears.

"I believe they will," murmured Miss Hanson, not without a pang of feminine pity for Queenie, who had evidently come to kill.

The orchestra had finished its tuning up, and the clatter of the patentleather shoes of the boys coming up en masse could be heard in the hall. Some of the little girls, frankly eager, looked toward the door, while others hid their heads in alarm on their mothers' shoulders.

The boys stood for a moment in a hesitating group, too aware of the glory of their white knickers and their wet, sleek hair to be fully aware of their surroundings.

"O Aunt "Trinka," cried Marcia, ecstatically, "are n't they just the most bee-you-tiful boys!"

The group of boys broke up rapidly as they recognized their friends among the guests lining the walls, and went to speak to them. Miss Hanson led the unattached ones up to Miss Van Lennep's corner and presented them to Marcia. She dropped a little curtsy to each of them in turn. The youngest master was watching nervously, but abandoned himself to unutterable relief when he saw on their blushing faces a blank stare of admiration re

In his killing clothes Wilfred Reginald strode up to Queenie and made the grave little bow that Miss Hanson had carefully taught them.

"O Wilfurd Reg'nuld," she cried, overwhelmed by the gorgeous vision, "you sure' do look grand!" She swung out proudly upon his arm, among the eddying couples of interlocked children that already filled the floor.

After this dance Marcia came darting across the floor, trailed by a wake of happy boys.

"O Aunt "Trinka," she cried breathlessly, "they are just too lovely! Nine of them have asked me for the next dance!"

"But, my dear," said her Aunt Katrinka, "you can't dance it with all of them!"

"Oh, yes, I can. I've divided it up. I just could n't disappoint any of them." Away she fluttered, with the boys crowding about her.

"Won't she be devastating when she is twenty!" Miss Van Lennep demanded of the roof of the gymnasium. "Whatever shall I do with her!"

Marcia was an undeniable success. She was so great a success that it was all Miss Hanson could do to pry enough boys out of her following to supply the other little girls with partners.

"We'll have nothing to fear from Queenie this time," said the headmaster. "Miss Hanson's dark horse wins at a trot.”

Between dances Marcia was hidden in the center of a swarming cloud of interested boys at the other end of the room.

"What do you suppose they can find to talk about?" inquired Miss Van Lennep of North America at large.

The bishop came in a little later, and his advent turned the party into a veritable occasion. Miss Van Lennep captured him at once, took him into a corner away from the rest, and rendered his escape impossible.

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The circle she had left behind breathed more freely, and soon were engrossed in conversation. Suddenly the elder Miss Beresford arose, her long jet ear-rings quivering and glittering with her excitement. She could not trust the evidence of her unaided eyes, and she put up her lorgnette. Everybody turned to stare in the direction of her glasses, which converged upon Marcia, who, with Mack as her partner, was emerging from the group of boys that continually surrounded her.

"What in heaven's name," she gasped, "are those ridiculous infants doing!"

"Something less holy, I believe, my dear," suggested the dean, "than the place you have just invoked."

The couple swayed for a space to the lilt of the latest fox-trot; then they paused for an appalling moment, with their feet perfectly still, but their bodies following the syncopated rhythm with a barbaric movement first introduced into America as a dance on the Midway plaisance of the Chicago World's Fair.

"Ermyngarde," said the younger Miss Beresford, putting her hand on her sister's arm, "I believe I believe -it's it's the shimmy!" Her voice sank to a whisper on the last

awful word. "I 've always wanted to see that."

"Cordelia! I must say " began the elder sister, and sank powerless into her chair.

Miss Hanson and the youngest master turned to each other in one long, agonizing look.

"Oh," said Miss Hanson, when she regained the power of speech, "it 's indecent!"

"You see, it 's very easy," Marcia was instructing in her dulcet little voice. "Everything moves but the feet."

"What shall we do?" Miss Hanson implored the head-master. "This can't go on; but you know what it would mean if we offended Miss Van Lennep."

"Serve the refreshments early," pronounced the head-master, gravely and without hesitation, "and put ipecac in Marcia's ice-cream. That ought to finish her for the evening."

"How like you, Braine," said the dean, with delicate crow's-feet of amusement gathering at the corners of his fine, dark eyes. "How very, very like you! But the suggestion about early refreshments is n't bad. Tell Miss Van Lennep that Marc and I want her and her charming little niece to eat their ice-cream with us in Marc's rooms. The bishop is going, and she 'll be glad to come." He had no modest illusions about the value of his position. "We 'll keep her the rest of the evening, won't we, Marc?"

It was Dr. Sinclair whom he addressed as Marc, but all that gentleman and eminent choir-master said

was:

"Thank God! that Queenie child is dancing with Wilfred Reginald!"

Under the hurried orders of Miss

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