clever Aunt Truth as chief designer.


The intervening hours had slipped quickly away, and now the fatal
moment had arrived, and everything was ready for the play.

The would-be actresses were a trifle excited when the Professor and
his eight students were brought up and introduced by Jack and Scott
Burton; and, as if that were not enough, who should drive up at the
last moment but the family from the neighbouring milk ranch, and beg
to be allowed the pleasure of witnessing the performance. Mr.
Sandford was the gentleman who had sold Dr. Winship his land, and so
they were cordially invited to remain.

All the cushions and shawls belonging to the camp were arranged
carefully on the knoll, for audience seats; it was a brilliant
moonlight night, and the stage assumed a very festive appearance with
its four pounds of candles and twelve Chinese lanterns.

Meanwhile the actors were dressing in their respective tents. Bell's
first dress was a long pink muslin wrapper of Mrs. Burton's, which
had been belted in and artistically pasted over with bouquets from
the cretonne trunk covers, in imitation of flowered satin; under this
she wore a short blue lawn skirt of her own, catching up the pink
muslin on the left side with a bouquet of wild roses, and producing
what she called a 'positively Neilson effect.'

Her bright hair was tossed up into a fluffy knot on the top of her
head; and with a flat coronet of wild roses and another great bunch
at her belt, one might have gone far and not have found a prettier