And there, beneath a chair, squatted the cause of the confusion, an innocent, unhappy, blinking toad!

“Oh, Larkie!”

This was a prolonged wail.

“It’s all right, Prue, honestly it is,” urged Lark with pathetic solemnity.  “We didn’t do it for a joke.  We’re keeping him for a good purpose.  Connie found him in the garden,—­and—­Carol said we ought to keep him for Professor Duke,—­he asked us to bring him things to cut up in science, you remember.  So we just shoved him into this shoe box, and—­we thought we’d keep him in the bath-tub until morning.  We did it for a good purpose, don’t you see we did?  Oh, Prudence!”

Prudence was horribly outraged, but even in that critical moment, justice insisted that Lark’s arguments were sound.  The professor had certainly asked the scholars to bring him “things to cut up.”  But a toad!  A live one!—­And the Ladies’ Aid!  Prudence shivered.

“I am sure you meant well, Larkie,” she said in a low voice, striving hard to keep down the bitter resentment in her heart, “I know you did.  But you should not have brought that—­that thing—­into the house.  Pick him up at once, and take him out-of-doors and let him go.”

But this was not readily done.  In spite of her shame and deep dismay, Lark refused to touch the toad with her fingers.

“I can’t touch him, Prudence,—­I simply can’t,” she whimpered.  “We shoved him in with the broom handle before.”

And as no one else was willing to touch it, and as the Ladies clustered together in confusion, and with much laughter, in the far corner of the other room, Prudence brought the broom and the not unwilling toad was helped to other quarters.

“Now go,” said Prudence quickly, and Lark was swift to avail herself of the permission.

Followed a quiet hour, and then the Ladies put aside their sewing and walked about the room, chatting in little groups.  With a significant glance to Fairy, Prudence walked calmly to the double doors between the dining-room and the sitting-room.  The eyes of the Ladies followed her with interest and even enthusiasm.  They were hungry.  Prudence slowly opened wide the doors, and—­stood amazed!  The Ladies clustered about her, and stood amazed also.  The dining-room was there, and the table!  But the appearance of the place was vastly different!  The snowy cloth was draped artistically over a picture on the wall, the lowest edges well above the floor.  The plates and trays, napkin-covered, were safely stowed away on the floor in distant corners.  The kitchen scrub bucket had been brought in and turned upside down, to afford a fitting resting place for the borrowed punch bowl, full to overflowing with fragrant lemonade.

And at the table were three dirty, disheveled little figures, bending seriously over piles of mud.  A not-unrecognizable Venus de Milo occupied the center of the table.  Connie was painstakingly at work on some animal, a dog perhaps, or possibly an elephant.  And——­