I shall not pretend to you that the days preceding the performance were easy ones. Both the twins have had colic, requiring Meg to miss all of the final week’s rehearsals; I discovered at the very last moment a broken heel on the boots, and had not kind Mr. Luft in town taken mercy upon me to keep open his shop until late, Don Felipe would have been reduced to playing his part while listing to the windward like a sailor; Teddy wouldn’t learn his lines, driving us all to distraction and causing Amy to threaten the direst of consequences, until, on the very last rehearsal on the very day before the play, he turned up word-perfect and smiling like a lamb, with an airy “You see—you fuss-pots needn’t have worked yourselves into such a pother after all,” thus giving us at the last some compassion for the trials endured by his benighted tutors at college.

The day of the performance dawned bright and crisp. Amy was in her glory in her blue gown which she would insist on wearing all day long, claiming that it would “take too much trouble to change later,” and that the parading abroad of this particularly becoming garment had nothing at all to do with the visit promised by a certain young Mr. Peebles, who had announced his intention of calling for coffee in the late morning.

Just after eleven, sure as his word, Mr. Peebles came calling, and particularly fetching Amy did look to greet him in her pretty blue dress with the pink ribbons and a pretty pink rose placed at a bewitching angle in her curls. Mr. Peebles clearly enjoyed the effect, and the two settled themselves in the parlor to enjoy a delightful visit over Hannah’s finest coffee set upon the best tea tray. Unfortunately, just as Amy and Mr. Peebles were sitting in the parlor as properly as you please, young Tommy Fletch was calling at the kitchen with the mutton chops for dinner, accompanied by his large dog, Caesar, who loves to play and whose eye fell straightaway on what seemed to him a most likely playmate in Miss Tabby. And the next thing our elegant Miss March and Mr. Peebles knew, there careened through the parlor a harum-scarum procession of Miss Tabby with tail fluffed out like a fir tree in fright, pursued by Caesar who thought it all a huge joke, pursued by Miss March’s sister with her hair in a duster and wielding a broom, which last she accidentally knocked into the coffee-pot, sending a stream of brown liquid clear across the skirt of Amy’s best blue gown.

Mr. Peebles behaved with most admirable gallantry throughout this unfortunate incident, inquiring tenderly as to the well-being of the victim, declaring stoutly (although we suspect with less than perfect dependability) that such accidents happen frequently in all the best of houses, and finally making his adieus with a true gentleman’s courtesy and adding assurances that it would be his pleasure to return on a more opportune occasion.