Mom Beck came out just then to tell them that dinner was waiting, and Lloyd hurried them through the back hall again, although she herself ran to the front door and looked out, before she took her seat at the table.  It was a merry meal, for Papa Jack told his best stories, and Cousin Carl, as they all called Mr. Forbes now, recalled his funniest jokes to make the children forget how near they had come to the parting hour.  And when the dessert was brought on they sang a duet they had learned when school-boys together, at which every one laughed until the tears stood in their eyes.

While they lingered at the table, Alec and Walker and Mom Beck, and all the servants on the place who could lend a hand, were turning the lawn into fairy-land.  They had been busy for several hours putting up strings of lanterns, and now they were lighting them, row after row.  Big lanterns, and little lanterns, round ones and square, of every size, colour, and shape, lit up the darkness of the summer night.  Huge red dragons swung between the white, vine-covered pillars of the porch.  Luminous fish and beasts and birds, hanging from the shrubs and trees on the lawn, set every bough a-twinkle, while all through the grass and all through the flower beds the flashing of hundreds of tiny fairy lamps made it seem as if the glow-worms were holding carnival.

There were tents pitched on the lawn and tables set out here and there, and every tent was brilliant with festoons of light and every table had a canopy fringed with flaming balls of ruby and emerald and amber.  But the most beautiful part of the whole dazzling scene was the old locust avenue, strung from top to bottom with lights.  The trees seemed suddenly to have burst into bloom with stars, when all down that long arch, from entrance gate to mansion, shone the soft glow of a myriad welcoming lanterns.

[Illustration:  “LET’S ALL SIT DOWN ON THE STEPS.”]

“Let’s all sit down on the steps and enjoy it before the people begin to come,” said the Little Colonel, after the first burst of surprise and enthusiastic admiration was over.

“Everybody in the Valley will be heah in a little bit to say good-bye to you all, and we told ’em to come early, because your train leaves so soon.”

Even as she spoke there was a sound of wheels turning in at the gate, and the band in the honey-suckle arbour began tuning their violins.  It was not long before the place was gay with many voices, and people were streaming back and forth over the lawn and porches.  Grown people as well as children were there.  All who had been at the pillow-case party; all who had entertained the girls in any way, and all who had been friends of Betty’s mother and Joyce’s in their girlhood.

After awhile, when the guests were being served with refreshments, under the lantern-hung canopies on the lawn, Mr. Forbes looked around for Betty.  She was nowhere to be found at first, but presently he stumbled over her in a dark corner of the porch, with her shade pulled over her eyes.