She dreamed that Jim Carr’s voice said, “Take the kid, Sing!  He’s all right!” and that Jim Carr lifted her up, and shouted out, “She’s almost gone!”

Then some one was carrying her across rough ground, across smooth ground, to where there was a fire, and blankets, and voices—­voices--voices.

“It makes me choke!” That was Mary Bell Barber, whispering to Jim Carr.  But she could not open her eyes.

“But drink it, dearest!  Swallow it!” he pleaded.

“You were too late, Jim, we couldn’t hold on!” she whispered pitifully.  And then, as the warmth and the stimulant had their effect, she did open her eyes; and the fire, the ring of faces, the black sky, and the moon breaking through, all slipped into place.

“Did you come for us, Jim?” she murmured, too tired to wonder why the big fellow should cry as he put his face against hers.

“I came for you, dear!  I came back to sit with you on the steps.  I didn’t want to dance without my girl, and that’s why I’m here.  My brave little girl!”

Mary Bell leaned against his shoulder contentedly.

“That’s right; you rest!” said Jim.  “We’re all going home now, and we’ll have you tucked away in bed in no time.  Mrs. Bates is all ready for you!”

“Jim,” whispered Mary Bell.

“Darling?”—­he put his mouth close to the white lips.

“Jim, will you remind Aunty Bates to hang up my party dress real carefully?  In all the fuss some one’s sure to muss it!” said Mary Bell.

WHAT HAPPENED TO ALANNA

A capped and aproned maid, with a martyred expression, had twice sounded the dinner-bell in the stately halls of Costello, before any member of the family saw fit to respond to it.

Then they all came at once, with a sudden pounding of young feet on the stairs, an uproar of young voices, and much banging of doors.  Jim and Danny, twins of fourteen, to whom their mother was wont proudly to allude as “the top o’ the line,” violently left their own sanctum on the fourth floor, and coasted down such banisters as lay between that and the dining-room.  Teresa, an angel-faced twelve-year-old in a blue frock, shut ‘The Wide, Wide World’ with a sigh, and climbed down from the window-seat in the hall.

Teresa’s pious mother, in moments of exultation, loved to compare and commend her offspring to such of the saints and martyrs as their youthful virtues suggested.  And Teresa at twelve had, as it were, graduated from the little saints, Agnes and Rose and Cecilia, and was now compared, in her mother’s secret heart, to the gracious Queen of all the Saints.  “As she was when a little girl,” Mrs. Costello would add, to herself, to excuse any undue boldness in the thought.

And indeed, Teresa, as she was to-night, her blue eyes still clouded with Ellen Montgomery’s sorrows, her curls tumbled about her hot cheeks, would have made a pretty foil in a picture of old Saint Anne.