night, and such bare necks and arms, with a man at the door, a man at
the head of the stairs to tell 'em where to go, and one in the
gentlemen's room, and two girls in the ladies' rooms to button their
gloves and put on their dancing pumps. The carousin' lasted till
daylight, and a tireder, more worn-out lot of folks than we was you
never seen. I was nearly dead."

"Were you there?' Eloise asked, with a feeling that there was some
incongruity between the Crompton party and Mrs. Biggs, who did not care
to say that she was one of the waitresses who buttoned gloves and put on
the dancing pumps in the dressing-room.

"Why, yes, I was there," she said at last, "though I wasn't exactly in
the doin's. I've never danced since I was dipped and jined the church.
Do you dance, or be you a perfessor?"

Eloise had to admit that she did dance and was not a professor, although
she hoped to be soon.

"What persuasion?" was Mrs. Biggs's next question, and Eloise replied,
"I was baptized in the Episcopal Church in Rome."

"The one in York State, I s'pose, and not t'other one across the seas?"
Mrs. Biggs suggested, and Eloise answered, "Yes, the one across the seas
in Italy."

"For goodness' sake! How you talk! You don't mean you was born there?"
Mrs. Biggs exclaimed, with a feeling of added respect for one who was
actually born across the seas. "Do you remember it, and did you know the
Pope and the King?"

Eloise said she did not remember being born, nor did she know the Pope
or the King.

"I was a little girl when I left Italy, and do not remember much,
except that I was happier there than I have ever been since."

"I want to know! I s'pose you've had trouble in your family?" was Mrs.
Biggs's quick rejoinder, as she scented some private history which she
meant to find out.

But beyond the fact that her father was dead and her mother in
California, she could learn nothing from Eloise, and returned to the
point from which they had drifted to the Episcopal Church in Rome.

"I kinder mistrusted you was a 'Piscopal. I do' know why, but I can most
always tell 'em," she said. "The Cromptons is all that way of thinkin'.
Old Colonel is a vestedman, I b'lieve they call 'em, but he swears
offul. I don't call that religion; do you? But folks ain't alike. I
don't s'pose the Church is to blame. There's now and then as good a
'Piscopal as you'll find anywhere. Ruby Ann has jined 'em, and goes it
strong. B'lieves in candles and vestures;