and Eloise had no time to suggest that she ought not to go, before she
found herself out upon the piazza, and Jack, who had locked the door,
was putting the key under the mat.

"You see I remember where I found it that time Howard and I desiccated
the Sabbath by calling upon you," he said, with a laugh in which Eloise
joined.

"Is Mr. Howard going?" she asked, and Jack replied, "He is a kind of
lazy fellow, but he'll be there all right;" and the first one they saw
distinctly as they drew near the house was Howard, struggling with the
crowd.

Howard had gone down on purpose to see Eloise, and was wondering how
with her chair she could ever be gotten through that mass of people,
when she appeared at the door, and, with Howard, wondered how she was to
get in. She might not have accomplished it if he had not come to the
rescue with two boys,--one Tim Biggs, the other a tall, freckled-faced,
light-haired fellow whom Jack greeted as Tom, saying, "Can you manage to
find a good position for Miss Smith?"

"You bet," came simultaneously from both boys, and immediately four
sharp elbows were being thrust into the sides of the people, who moved
all they could and made a passage for Eloise and her chair near the
middle of the room, and in a comparatively sheltered place where she
could see everything without being jostled.

If she could see everything and everybody, so everybody could see her,
and for a moment there was a hush in the large room where every eye was
turned upon Eloise, who began to feel very uncomfortable, and wish she
had not come. She had wondered what she ought to wear, and had decided
upon black as always suitable. When she left California her mother had
urged her to take a small velvet cape lined with ermine. It was the only
expensive article of dress she had, and she was very choice of it, but
to-night she wore it about her shoulders, as later the air was inclined
to blow up cool and damp from the sea. Just as they reached the house
Jack stooped to arrange it, throwing it back on either side so that more
of the ermine would show.

"There! You look just like a queen! Ermine is very becoming to you," he
said, and the people staring at her thought so, too.

Her head was uncovered, and her hair, which waved softly around her
forehead, was wound in a flat knot low in her neck, making her look very
young, as she sat shrinking from the fire of eyes directed towards her
and saw, if she did not hear, the low whi