was a stand-up
meal--and asked her visitors to take birds, and oysters, and terrapin.
What the dickens is terrapin? Have you any idea, sisters? I ate some,
and it had a stewy sort of taste, as if it had been kind of burnt in
cooking.

Well, one took one thing, and one another. Then each fellow wiped his
mustaches, and the waiters came round with cider bottles, loaded over
and chained up with silver, and the cider hissed and bubbled and
sparkled as they poured it out into the glasses, that started narrow at
the bottom, but spread out into dishes at the top, giving a chance for
little whirlpools to the cider--which _was_ cider, I can tell you; it
had vim enough in it to make your eyes snap.

When the glasses were full we all took them up. The gentlemen muttered
"Compliments of the season," and we answered "Compliments of the season"
Cecilia and all--who just had the impudence to stand on tip-toe, and
knock her glass against that of the fellow with lilac gloves and curly
hair. Then we all drank and sipped, and, as that party went off,
another came in--stream after stream--till night. It was the same thing
over and over again, till ten o'clock at night, when Mr. Dempster came
home, looking awfully tired out; then we just gave up. Sisters, this has
been the hardest and most confusing day that I have known in New York.
It seems as if my joints never would get limber again. But then I had a
real good time, though the cider did begin to get into my head towards
night. It couldn't have been made out of Vermont apples, I feel
certain--they haven't got so much dizziness in 'em.

XXIV.

MIGNON: A NIGHT AT THE GRAND OPERA.

Sisters, we went to the opera--that is, dear sisters in the cause, the
Grand Duke and I were there; both of us seated on red cushions, and so
near that we could exchange glances through our eye-glasses, which draw
a beloved object close to you. They are a great invention which has not
yet reached that portion of the country where prayer-meetings take the
place of operas.

I felt in my bones that he would meet me there; and when Cousin Emily
Elizabeth sent me word that she had got a loge--which means a little
square pen in the gallery, cushioned off like a first-class pew--and
wanted me to go with her to hear the great primer-donner, I just got
that dress out again, and set the frizzing-pins to work, and did myself
up so scrumptiously that I don't believe that a creature on Sprucehill
would have k