The golden thread is spun,
The Knight has won his bride,
And now our task is done,
We may no longer bide. 
On rainbow bubbles bright,
We fairies float away.
The wrong is now set right
And Love has found the way!

  [Curtain.

As Betty finished reading, there was a babel of voices and a clapping of hands that made her face grow redder and redder.  They were all trying to congratulate her at once, and she was so confused that she wished she could run away and hide.  But the applause was very sweet to shy little Betty.  She felt that she had done her best, and that not only her godmother was proud of her, but Keith, and Keith’s beautiful mother, who bent from her queenly height to kiss Betty’s flushed cheek, and whisper a word of praise that made her glow for weeks afterward, whenever she thought of it.

    “’And he kissed me once on my soft pink cheek,
      And once in my heart of gold,’”

hummed Keith.  “Say, Betty, that’s mighty pretty.  How did you ever think of it?”

Before she could answer, one of the maids came out with a tray of sherbet and cake, and the boys sprang up to help serve the girls.

“I know some of my part already,” said Kitty, stirring her sherbet suggestively, and repeating in a sepulchral tone: 

            “’I’ll stir
    This hank of hair, this patch of fur,
    This feather and this flapping fin,
    This claw, this bone, this dried snake skin.’”

“Oh, Kitty, for mercy’s sake hush!” said Allison; “you make my blood run cold.”

“But I must, if we’ve only a week to get ready in.  I expect to say it day and night.  It’s better to do that than to take more than a week, and give up the camping party, isn’t it?”

“It’s going to be a howling success,” prophesied Malcolm.  “When mamma and auntie and Aunt Mary go into a scheme the way they are doing now, costumes and drills, and all sorts of impossible things don’t count at all.  We’ll be ready in plenty of time.”

“Especially,” said the Little Colonel, with dignity, “when mothah and Papa Jack are goin’ to do so much.  My pa’ht is longah than anybody’s.”

Next morning at the depot, the post-office, and the blacksmith shop a sign was displayed which everybody stopped to read.  Similar announcements nailed on various trees throughout the Valley caused many an old farmer to pull up his team and adjust his spectacles for a closer view of this novel poster.

They were all Miss Allison’s work.  Each one bore at the top a crayon sketch of a huge St. Bernard, with a Red Cross on its collar and shoulder-bags.  Underneath was a notice to the effect that an entertainment would be given the following Friday night in the college hall, a short concert, followed by a play called “The Princess Winsome’s Rescue,” in which Hero, the Red Cross dog recently brought from Switzerland, would take a prominent part.  The proceeds were to be given to the cause of the Red Cross.