Euleta beamed again, and the others with her. They were sisters,
and their careful mother had given them hats just alike, dreadful
mysteries of magenta roses and apple-green ribbon. Their pride was
pleasant to see, and Hildegarde smiled back at them, saying to
herself that the dear little faces would look charming in
anything, however, hideous.

Soon more children came, and yet more: Vesta Philbrook and Martha
Skeat, Philena Tabb and Susan Aurora Bulger,--twelve children in
all, and every child there before the stroke of four.

"Well," said Hildegarde to herself, "the tea-table will not be
quite so pretty as if I had had time to make the wreaths; but they
would rather play than have wreaths, and I should not have left it
till the last hour, sinner that I am." She proposed "Little Sally
Waters," and they all fell to it with ardour.



"Oh, little Sally Waters, sitting in the sun,
Crying, weeping, for your young man;
Rise, Sally, rise, wipe your weeping eyes," etc.

Martha Skeat was the first Sally; she chose Susan Aurora, and
Susan Aurora chose Hildegarde. Down went Hildegarde on the floor,
and wept and wrung her hands so dramatically that the children
paused in alarm, fearing that some real calamity had occurred.

"Oh! oh!" moaned Hildegarde; "my young man! Go on, children. Why
are you stopping? Oh, where IS my young man?" she sobbed; and the