k's best blue plush rocker, Mrs. Westley Keyts's new sofa,
upholstered with gorgeous ingrain, and Mrs. Eubanks's new black walnut
combination desk and bookcase with brass trimmings and little spindled
balconies, in which could be elegantly placed the mineral specimens
picked up along the river bank, and the twin statuettes of the fluting
shepherd and his inamorata. As Mrs. Judge Robinson herself possessed new
and high-priced furniture, including a gold-and-onyx stand to occupy the
bay window and uphold the Rogers group, "Going for the Parson," as well
as two fragile gilt chairs, which considerate guests would not sit in
but leave exposed to view, and a complete new set of black walnut, the
effect that day--which included a grand smell of varnish--was nothing
less than sumptuous.

The occasion was a semi-monthly meeting of the Ladies' Home Study and
Culture Club, at which Miss Caroline was to be present. There had been a
suspension of the Club's meetings while Mrs. Potts was in abeyance, but
on this day she was to enter the world again and preside over the
meeting as "Madam President," though the ladies sometimes forgot to call
her that.

The paper read by Mrs. Potts--who was not at all ineffective in her
black--was on "The Lake Poets," with a few pointed selections from
Wordsworth and others.

Whether or not Miss Caroline was rightly impressed by the furniture
exhibit was a question not easy to determine. True, she stared at it
with something in her eyes beyond a mere perception of its lines; but
whether this was the longing passion of an awakened soul or the simple
awe of the unenlightened was not to be ascertained at the moment.

Testimony as to her enjoyment of the President's paper was more
circumstantial. In the midst of this, as the listeners were besought to
"dwell a moment on this exquisite delineation of Nature,"--expertly
pronounced "Nate-your" by Mrs. Potts,--Miss Caroline turned her head
aside as one deeply moved by the poet's magic. But Marcella Eubanks,
glancing at that moment into a mirror on the opposite wall,--a mirror in
a plush frame on which pansies had been painted,--caught the full and
frank exposure of a yawn. It was a thorough yawn. Miss Caroline had
surrendered abjectly to it, in the belief--unrecking the mirror--that
she could not be detected.

The discussion that followed the paper--as was customary at the
meetings--proved to be a bit livelier. Each lady said something she had
thought up