or, and Rachel almost felt that she could
have made her way up to the drawing-room more comfortably under Mrs.
Rule's mild protection. All the servants seemed to rush at her, and
when she found herself in the hall and was conducted into some inner
room, she was not allowed to shake herself into shape without the aid
of a maid-servant. Mrs. Cornbury,--who took everything as a matter of
course and was ready in a minute,--had turned the maid over to the
young lady with a kind idea that the young lady's toilet was more
important than that of the married woman. Rachel was losing her head
and knew that she was doing so. When she was again taken into the
hall she hardly remembered where she was, and when Mrs. Cornbury
took her by the arm and began to walk up-stairs with her, her
strongest feeling was a wish that she was at home again. On the first
landing,--for the dancing-room was upstairs,--they encountered Mr.
Tappitt, conspicuous in a blue satin waistcoat; and on the second
landing they found Mrs. Tappitt, magnificent in a green Irish poplin.
"Oh, Mrs. Cornbury, we are so delighted. The Miss Fawcetts are
here; they are just come. How kind of you to bring Rachel Ray. How
do you do, Rachel?" Then Mrs. Cornbury moved easily on into the
drawing-room, and Rachel still found herself carried with her.
She was half afraid that she ought to have slunk away from her
magnificent chaperon as soon as she was conveyed safely within the
house, and that she was encroaching as she thus went on; but still
she could not find the moment in which to take herself off. In the
drawing-room,--the room from which the carpets had been taken,--they
were at once encountered by the Tappitt girls, with whom the Fawcett
girls on the present occasion were so intermingled that Rachel hardly
knew who was who. Mrs. Butler Cornbury was soon surrounded, and a
clatter of words went on. Rachel was in the middle of the fray, and
some voices were addressed also to her; but her presence of mind was
gone, and she never could remember what she said on the occasion.

There had already been a dance,--the commencing operation of the
night's work,--a thin quadrille, in which the early comers had taken
part without much animation, and to which they had been driven up
unwillingly. At its close the Fawcett girls had come in, as had now
Mrs. Cornbury, so that it may be said that the evening was beginning
again. What had been as yet done was but the tuning of the fiddles
bef