At a signal from the tall leader, the sheeted party suddenly divided, half of the masked faces grinning on one side of the steps, and half going to the other.  Then an auction began, one side being sold to the other.  The bidding was all in pantomime, and they all looked so much alike that nobody knew whom he was bidding for, or to whom he was knocked down.  The giant was the auctioneer.

At last each bidder was provided with a partner, and two by two they all went gravely up the steps to shake hands with Mrs. Sherman and the girls.  Every one spoke in an assumed voice, and recognition was almost impossible.  The girls talked with every one in turn, but Rob and Keith were the only boys they had recognised when the signal for unmasking was given, and little Bethel Cassidy was the only girl.  They knew her queer little lisp.

Cake and sherbet were brought out, and great was everybody’s astonishment when masks were slipped off, and the pillow-cases jerked away from the wearers’ rumpled hair.  To Keith’s disgust, he found that the partner whom he had bid for energetically, thinking it was Sally Fairfax, was only his brother Malcolm, and Malcolm teased him all evening by quoting aloud some of the complimentary speeches Keith had whispered to him under cover of their disguises.

“Oh, gracious!” roared Malcolm.  “It was too funny; Keith, fanning me with one of those stubby little stocking-covered fins of his, and making complimentary speeches about my eyes.  Told me he would know them anywhere.  And he spouted poetry, he did,” added Malcolm, doubling up with another laugh.  “Oh, it was too good!  Hi, Buddy,” chucking Keith under the chin, “are you of the same opinion still?  Ain’t they pretty, ‘mine eyes so blue and tender?’”

“Aw, hush!” growled Keith, in a shamefaced sort of way, adding, in a savage undertone, “I’ll make black eyes of ’em if you don’t stop.”

That was not the only odd assortment of partners, for Miss Allison had bid for plump little Mrs. Cassidy, thinking it was one of the boys in her Sunday school class; and one little maid of seven found that an old bachelor uncle had fallen to her lot.

“You see we made a wholesale affair of it,” said Miss Allison to Eugenia.  “We drove around the neighbourhood in two big wagonettes, and picked up whole families at a time.”

“It is the jolliest surprise I ever saw,” answered Eugenia, looking all around at the little groups laughing and talking over their refreshments.  “It is hard to tell which are having the best time, the children or the grown people; they are all mixed up together.”

As she spoke the buzz of voices ceased, for there was a sudden blinding flash of lightning and a loud peal of thunder that made the windows rattle.  The storm which Mrs. Sherman had predicted would come before morning, had crept up unnoticed, and caught them unawares.

“Come inside!” cried Mrs. Sherman, as, with a furious rush and roar the wind swept across them, banging window shutters, whirling leaves and gravel in their faces, and lashing the trees until they were bent almost double.  Another blinding glare of lightning followed, with such a crash of thunder that Eugenia put her fingers in her ears and screamed, and Betty hid her face in her hands.