the boy’s angry face. “It’s the funniest thing I ever—” at this moment his voice died of paralysis.
“I’ll fix you,” said Miss Amy. “I’ve got just the thing for you.”
She gave him a full baggy clown’s suit, of green linen. It was a relic of a Hallowe’en party; its wide folds were gartered about his ankles.
He turned a distressed, puzzled face toward Miss Amy.
“That’s not right, is it?” he asked. “He never wore anything like this, did he?”
Miss Amy looked. Her deep bosom heaved with full contralto laughter.
“Yes, that’s right! That’s fine!” she yelled. “He was like that, anyway. No one will ever notice, boy.” She collapsed heavily into a wicker chair which widened with a protesting creak.
“Oh, Lord!” she groaned, wet-cheeked. “I don’t believe I ever saw—”
The pageant was performed on the embowered lawns of the Manor House. Dr. George B. Rockham stood in a green hollow—a natural amphitheatre. His audience sat on the turf of the encircling banks. As the phantom cavalcade of poetry and the drama wound down to him, Dr. George B. Rockham disposed of each character neatly in descriptive pentameter verse. He was dressed in the fashion of the Restoration—a period he coveted because it understood the charms of muscular calves. His heavy legs bulged knottily below a coy fringe of drawer-ruffles.
Eugene stood waiting on the road above, behind an obscuring wall of trees. It was rich young May. “Doc” Hines (Falstaff) waited beside him. His small tough face grinned apishly over garments stuffed with yards of wadding. Grinning, he smote himself upon his swollen paunch: the blow left a dropsical depression.
He turned, with a comical squint, on Eugene:
“Hal,” said he, “you’re a hell of a looking prince.”
“You’re no beauty, Jack,” said Eugene.
