night in a general way.

Of course Cousin Dempster and his wife were invited, being _my_ cousins,
and so saturated with the family genius, that people are constantly
expecting it to break out, which it hasn't yet, except in a general way.
But Cousin D. made lots of money in the war, and money is thought almost
as much of as talent by some people. Still, between ourselves, I don't
think they would have been invited if they hadn't come from Sprucehill;
which is taking a literary position next to the Hub since our Society
has begun to publish my humble reports.

Well, just at nine o'clock, if you had been in front of my
boarding-house you might have seen a splendid carriage standing at the
door, and that coachman, in his fur collar and cuffs, sitting high up on
the driver's seat, and scrouching his head down while a storm of sleet
and snow beat over him.

If you had looked toward the house, three or four eager and curious
faces might have been seen flat against every front window as a certain
dignified and queenly person came slowly down the steps, with a white
opera-cloak folded over her magnificent person, and a pink silk long
train bunched up under it, lining-side out.

The moment that carriage-door shut with an aristocratic bang you might
have seen those faces turn from the window and look at each other--then
noses turned up at sympathizing noses, giving out audible sniffs of that
envy which the wonderful endowments of some persons are apt to engender
in the inferior female mind.

But if you had looked into that carriage you would have seen it packed
comfortably as a robin's nest in blossom time. There was my pink dress
floating round me in rosy billows; there was Cousin E. E.'s corn-colored
moire antique swelling like a balloon on her side; and there was Cousin
Dempster rising like a black exclamation point up from one corner, and
_that child_ drumming her blue kid-boots against the seat in another
corner, and snarling because a gust of sleet came in with me before the
fellow outside could shut the door.

When I saw her, my blood riled in a minute.

"Why, Cousin Dempster," says I, "children were not invited."

"Children, indeed!" says the child, giving her head a fling: "I suppose
Cousin Frost thinks that nothing but old maids can be young ladies--the
idea!"

"Daughter!" almost shrieked Cousin Emily E., a-catching her breath, and
giving a frightened look over my way.

"My child, how can you be so rude?" s