staggered under its heavyweight, their natural strength being
considerably sapped by suppressed laughter.

Nancy chose an especially large and stout barrel. They put a little
(very little) excelsior in the bottom, then a pair of dumb-bells, then a
funeral urn, then a little hay, and another funeral urn, crosswise. The
spaces between were carelessly filled in with Indian clubs. On these
they painfully dropped You Dirty Boy, and on top of him the other pair
of funeral urns, more dumbbells, and another Indian club. They had
packed the barrel in the corner where it stood, so they simply laid the
cover on top and threw a piece of sacking carelessly over it. The whole
performance had been punctuated with such hysterical laughter from
Kathleen that she was too weak to be of any real use,--she simply aided
and abetted the chief conspirator. The night was not as other nights.
The girls kept waking up to laugh a little, then they went to sleep, and
waked again, and laughed again, and so on. Nancy composed several
letters to her Cousin Ann dated from Beulah and explaining the sad
accident that had occurred. As she concocted these documents between her
naps she could never remember in her whole life any such night of mirth
and minstrelsy, and not one pang of conscience interfered, to cloud the
present joy nor dim that anticipation which is even greater.

Nancy was downstairs early next morning and managed to be the one to
greet the china-packers. "We filled one barrel last evening," she
explained to them. "Will you please head that up before you begin work?"
which one of the men obligingly did.

"We'll mark all this stuff and take it down to the station this
afternoon," said the head packer to Mrs. Carey.