ild in her place,' she thought, 'for she is
getting to feel herself of quite too much consequence, with so much
attention from Arthur.'

But her husband promptly vetoed the proposition, saying that when Jerry
Crawford came to the park house to an entertainment it would be as a
guest, and not as a waiter. So a colored boy stood in the upper hall,
and a colored boy stood in the lower hall, and there were colored
waiters everywhere, and Dolly had never been happier or prouder in her
life: for Governor Markham and his wife, from Iowa, were there, and a
judge's wife from Springfield--all guests of Grace Atherton, and, in
consequence, bidden to the party.

Another remarkable feature of the evening was the presence of Arthur in
the parlors. He had known both Governor Markham and his wife, Ethelyn
Grant, and had been present at their wedding, and it was mostly on their
account that he had consented to join in the festivities. Jerry, it is
true, had done a great deal toward persuading him to go down,
repeating, in her own peculiar way, what she had heard people say with
regard to his seclusion from society.

'You just make a hermit of yourself,' she said, 'cooped up here all the
time. I don't wonder folks say you are crazy. It is enough to make
anybody crazy, to stay in one or two rooms and see nobody but Charles
and me. Just dress yourself in your best clothes and go down and be
somebody, and don't talk of Gretchen all the time! I am tired of it, and
so is everybody. Give her a rest for one evening, and show the people
how nice you can be if you only have a mind to.'

Jerry delivered this speech with her hands on her hips, and with all the
air of a woman of fifty; while Arthur laughed immoderately, and promised
her to do his best not to disgrace her, and to appear as if he were not
crazy.

Jerry's anxiety was somewhat like that of a mother for a child whose
ability she doubts; and, after her supper was over she took her way to
the park house to see that Arthur was dressed properly for the occasion.

'It would be like him to go without his neck-tie and wear his every-day
boots,' she thought.

But she found him as faultlessly gotten up as he well could be in his
old-fashioned evening dress, which sat rather loosely upon him, for he
had grown thinner with each succeeding year.

Jerry thought him splendid, and watched him admiringly as if he left the
room and started for the parlors, with her last injunction ringing in
he