The gown, though, was another matter. Hannah has soaked it in vinegar and believes that it can be rescued with sufficient scrubbing on Monday, but it was quite ruined for the evening, and for a while it seemed perilously probable that it would take the entertainment with it, for with no gown there could be no Rosarita, and with no Rosarita, no play at all.

“You could wear another gown,” I suggested a little doubtfully, for you know that when Amy has set her fancy upon an outfit no other will serve, were it stitched by angels themselves.

“I could,” she retorted, “if you would like me to wear either of the only two other gowns I have fit to wear so close to washday and now that the silk has been put away. Which would you rather me be, Jo, The Lady in Turned Faded Drab, or The Lady in Gingham?”

Happily, Don Pedro himself, happening to call at the very height of this commotion, turned up trumps with a solution. It seems that old Mr. Laurence still retains in his possession several fine items that had once belonged to Laurie’s mother that he could not bring himself to give away, for the old gentleman is often more sentimental than he likes to seem. Of course, he is not in the custom of lending them out, but Laurie can wheedle him so, and you know that the old man has a soft spot in his heart for Amy, so in the end she appeared that evening resplendent in a gown that was of a far deeper blue, and a far finer cut and cloth, than any poor garment our own humble wardrobes could dream of supplying.

And such a lark as followed, dear Bethie, would have had a Quaker stage-struck. Don Pedro by turns raged, lamented, shook his irons, and at the very last emerged so very gallantly triumphant with Rosarita at his side that the audience barely noticed that the spirit gum had worn quite off his left cheek, requiring him to declaim his lines with jaw clenched like one with severe toothache, or half the beard would have slid into his romantically ruffed collar. Rosarita herself is happily evincing dramatic powers that have much improved since we were children—not that the gentlemen in the audience would have cared a fig if she had stood like a stone statue, lovely as she looked in both joy and distress, and fetchingly as her yellow curls fell down her white neck to the borrowed blue dress. Don Felipe schemed and cursed and smote his breast and was most gratified to hear an audible hiss of hatred arise from the dress circle each time he appeared upon the stage. But the star of them all was the Gypsy Queen, for Meg’s voice grows richer with maturity even as her face and bearing grow more tenderly beautiful with all the sweet and womanly experiences that have come her way of late. Her performance was truly affecting, and when she told the story of her poor little daughter, carried away in infancy by the bandits and never seen since, I do believe that there was not a handkerchief left undampened in the entire house—in front of the stage or behind.