nn is thirty-five."

Having settled Ruby's age and asked Eloise hers, and told her she looked
young for nineteen, the good woman branched off upon the grandeur of the
Crompton House, with its pictures and statuary and bric-a-brac, its
flowers and fountains, and rustic arbors and seats scattered over the
lawn. Eloise had heard something of the place from a school friend, but
never had it been so graphically described as by Mrs. Biggs, and she
listened with a feeling that in the chamber of her childhood's memory a
picture of this place had been hung by somebody.

"Was it my father?" she asked herself, and answered decidedly, "No," as
she recalled the little intercourse she had ever had with him. "Was it
my mother?" she next asked herself, and involuntarily her tears started
as she thought of her mother, and how unlikely it was that she had ever
been in Crompton.

Turning her head aside to hide her tears from Mrs. Biggs, she said,
"Tell me more of the place. It almost seems as if I had been there."

Thus encouraged, Mrs. Biggs began a description of the lawn party which
she was too young to remember, although she was there with her mother,
and had a faint recollection of music and candy and lights in the trees,
and an attack of colic the night after as a result of overeating.

"But, my land!" she said, "that was nothin' to the blow-out on Amy's
sixteenth birthday. The Colonel had kep' her pretty close after he took
her from school. She had a governess and she had a maid, but I must say
she didn't seem an atom set up, and was just as nice when she met us
girls. 'Hello, Betsey,' she'd say to me. That's my name, Betsey, but I
call myself 'Lisbeth. 'Hello, Betsey,' I can hear her now, as she
cantered past on her pony, in her long blue ridin' habit. Sometimes
she'd come to the school-house and set on the grass under the apple
trees and chew gum with us girls. That was before her party, which beat
anything that was ever seen in Crompton, or will be again. The avenue
and yard and stables were full of carriages, and there were eighteen
waiters besides the _canterer_ from Boston."

"The what?" Eloise asked, and Mrs. Biggs replied, "The _canterer_, don't
you know, the man who sees to things and brings the vittles and his
waiters. They say he alone cost the Colonel five hundred dollars; but,
my land! that's no more for him than five dollars is for me. He fairly
swims in money. Such dresses you never seen as there was there that