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“These are your dresses, girls,” said the matron. “Let Miss Curry get the len’ths and neck measures. And look, here’s the embroidery I got. Won’t that make up pretty? The waists will be all insertion, pretty near.”

“Me, too?” said Marg’ret Hammond, catching a rapturous breath.

“You, too,” answered Mrs. Costello in her most matter-of-fact tone. “You see, you three will be the very centre of the group, and it’ll look very nice, your all being dressed the same–why, Marg’ret, dear!” she broke off suddenly. For Marg’ret, standing beside her chair, had dropped her head on Mrs. Costello’s shoulder and was crying.

“I worried so about my dress,” said she, shakily, wiping her eyes on the soft sleeve of Mrs. Costello’s shirt-waist; when a great deal of patting, and much smothering from the arms of Teresa and Alanna had almost restored her equilibrium, “and Joe worried too! I couldn’t write and bother my father. And only this morning I was thinking that I might have to write and tell Sister Rose that I couldn’t be in the exhibition, after all!”

“Well, there, now, you silly girl! You see how much good worrying does,” said Mrs. Costello, but her own eyes were wet.

“The worst of it was,” said Marg’ret, red-cheeked, but brave, “that I didn’t want any one to think my father wouldn’t give it to me. For you know”–the generous little explanation tugged at Mrs. Costello’s heart–“you know he would if he COULD!”

“Well, of course he would!” assented that lady, giving the loyal little daughter a kiss before the delightful business of fitting and measuring began. The new dresses promised to be the prettiest of their kind, and harmony and happiness reigned in the sewing-room.

But it was only a day later that Teresa and Alanna returned from school with faces filled with expressions of utter woe. Indignant, protesting, tearful, they burst forth the instant they reached their mother’s sympathetic presence with the bitter tale of the day’s happenings. Marg’ret Hammond’s father had come home again, it appeared, and he was awfully, awfully cross with Marg’ret and Joe. They weren’t to come to the Costellos’ any more, or he’d whip them. And Marg’ret had been crying, and THEY had been crying, and Sister didn’t know what was the matter, and they couldn’t tell her, and the rehearsal was no FUN!

While their feeling was still at its height, Dan and Jimmy came in, equally roused by their enforced estrangement from Joe Hammond. Mrs. Costello was almost as much distressed as the children, and excited and mutinous argument held the Costello dinner-table that night. The Mayor, his wife noticed, paid very close attention to the conversation, but he did not allude to it until they were alone.

“So Hammond’ll take no favors from me, Mollie?”

“I suppose that’s it, Frank. Perhaps he’s been nursing a grudge all these weeks. But it’s cruel hard on the children. From his comin’ back this way, I don’t doubt he’s out of work, and where Marg’ret’ll get her white dress from now, I don’t know!”

“Well, if he don’t provide it, Tess’ll recite the salutation,” said the Mayor, with a great air of philosophy. But a second later he added, “You couldn’t have it finished up, now, and send it to the child on the chance?”

His wife shook her head despondently, and for several days went about with a little worried look in her bright eyes, and a constant dread of the news that Marg’ret Hammond had dropped out of the exhibition. Marg’ret was sad, the little girls said, and evidently missing them as they missed her, but up to the very night of the dress rehearsal she gave no sign of worry on the subject of a white dress.

Mrs. Costello had offered her immense parlors for the last rehearsal of the chief performers in the plays and tableaux, realizing that even the most obligingly blind of Mother Superiors could not appear to ignore the gathering of some fifty girls in their gala dresses in the convent hall, for this purpose. Alanna and Teresa were gloriously excited over the prospect, and flitted about the empty rooms on the evening appointed, buzzing like eager bees.