“I guess I am! You are a set of trumps, and we'll give you a first-class spread after the play to pay for it. Won't we, fellows?” answered Jack, much gratified, and feeling that now he could act his own part capitally.
“We will. It was a handsome thing to do, and we think well of you for it. Hey, Gus?” and Frank nodded approvingly at all, though he looked only at Annette.
“As king of this crowd, I call it to order,” said Gus, retiring to the throne, where Juliet sat laughing in her red table-cloth.
“We'll have 'The Fair One with Golden Locks' next time; I promise you that,” whispered Ed to Mabel, whose shining hair streamed over her blue dress like a mantle of gold-colored silk.
“Girls are pretty nice things, aren't they? Kind of 'em to take Jill in. Don't Molly look fine, though?” and Grif's black eyes twinkled as he planned to pin her skirts to Merry's at the first opportunity.
“Susy looks as gay as a feather-duster. I like her. She never snubs a fellow,” said Joe, much impressed with the splendor of the court ladies.
The boys' costumes were not yet ready, but they posed well, and all had a merry time, ending with a game of blind-man's-buff, in which every one caught the right person in the most singular way, and all agreed as they went home in the moonlight that it had been an unusually jolly meeting.
So the fairy play woke the sleeping beauty that lies in all of us, and makes us lovely when we rouse it with a kiss of unselfish good-will, for, though the girls did not know it then, they had adorned themselves with pearls more precious than the waxen ones they decked their Princess in.