d like the feet of
a Vermont girl when she dances from the heart.

All these carriages were filled as if they were on the way to a high
jubilation, choke full of ladies, with parasols hovering over them like
wild birds taking wing, and great clouds of silk, lace gauze, and shiny
stuff a-billowing over the sides, till you could but just see the silk
cushions they leaned against. Then, again, some were crowded over with
gentlemen, mostly in white hats--which delighted me--some with cigars in
their mouths--some not--but every one of them just boiling over with
good-nature and fun.

This was the way we went. Cousin Dempster has made a good deal of money
in Washington--contracting, or something--and he got a spick-span new
open carriage for this high occasion--a carriage made soft as a bird's
nest with brown satin cushions, and that glittered outside like a crow's
back whenever the sun struck it.

We had a great big fellow, in new plum-colored clothes on the driver's
seat, and another genteel youngster by his side--all plum-color and
hat-band, like the coachman. Inside, there was Cousin E. E. with a
pea-green dress on, all flounces and fringe, and overskirts piled up so
high behind that she couldn't lean back, and your missionary, Miss
Phoemie Frost, in her pink silk (turned again), and the white hat with
plumes of snow, which bespoke at once her good taste and her most sacred
political preferences, which would keep going on both sides all I could
do.

There, in the front seat, with his back to the horses and his face to
us, sat Dempster, looking out with envy and bitter feelings on the men
in buggies, that were laughing like fun, and smoking like New England
stone chimneys. At such times I do not think that Dempster appreciates
all the sweet benefits of female society.

Last and least, I am sorry to say, was that child, Cecilia, with a pink
parasol about as big as a good-sized toadstool, fluttering before her
face, and all in a storm of flounces above her knees, with nothing but
kid boots and silk stockings below.

I do wonder what possesses Dempster and E. E. to train that child along
wherever they go! She is just the aggravation of my life.

Well, with our open carriage yeasting over with green, pink, white, and
blue, which Dempster broke up with a lean streak of black, we rolled
through the gate of the race-grounds and came up, with a magnificent
sweep, to the back door of the club house, when E. E. and I gave a