't please you, Madam, Mrs Betty bade me bring you a dish of tea,"
said she; "for she said 'twas yet two good hours ere supper, and you
should be the better of a snack after your journey. Here is both tea
and chocolate, bread and butter, and shortcake." And setting down the
tray, she left them to enjoy its contents.

"Long life to Betty!" said Rhoda. "Here, Phoebe! pour me a dish of
chocolate. I never get any at home. Madam has a notion it makes people
fat."

"But does she not like you to take it?" asked Phoebe, pausing, with the
silver chocolatiere in her hand.

"Oh, pother! go on!" exclaimed Rhoda. "Give it me, if your tender
conscience won't let you. I say, Phoebe, you'll be a regular prig and
prude, if you don't mind."

"I don't know what those are," replied Phoebe, furtively engaged in
rubbing her hand where Rhoda had pinched it as she seized the handle of
the chocolate pot.

"Oh, don't you?" answered Rhoda. "I do, for I've got you to look at. A
prig is a stuck-up silly creature, and a prude is always thinking
everything wicked. And that's what you are."

Phoebe wisely made no reply. Tea finished, Rhoda condescended to be
dressed and have her hair curled and powdered, gave Phoebe very few
minutes for changing her own dress, and then, followed by her cousin and
handmaid, she descended to the drawing-room. To Phoebe's consternation,
it seemed full of young ladies and gentlemen, in fashionable array; and
the consternation was not relieved by a glimpse of Mr Marcus Welles,
radiant in blue and gold, through a vista of plumes, lace lappets, and
fans. Betty was there, making herself generally useful and agreeable;
and Molly, making herself the reverse of both. Phoebe scanned the
brilliant crowd earnestly for Gatty. But Gatty was nowhere to be seen.

Rhoda went forward, and plunged into the crowd, kissing and courtesying
to all the girls she recognised. She was soon the gayest of the gay
among them. No one noticed Phoebe but Betty, and she gave her a kindly
nod in passing, and said, "Pray divert yourself." Phoebe's diversion
was to retire into a corner, and from her "loop-hole of retreat, to peep
at such a world."

A very young world it was, whose oldest inhabitant at that moment was
under twenty-five. But the boys and girls--for they were little more--
put on the most courtier-like and grown-up airs. The ladies sat round
the room, fluttering their fans, or laughing behind them: in some cases
g