dresses, or whatever they were, steadily falling to pieces. Now and then one of the children would pause,
as the recovered thread became inconveniently long, wind it on a bobbin, and start again with another
short end.
At last all the work was picked to pieces and put away, and the lady led the way into the next room,
walking backwards, and making the insane remark "Not yet, dear: we must get the sewing done first." After
which, I was not surprised to see the children skipping backwards after her, exclaiming "Oh, mother, it is
such a lovely day for a walk!"
In the dining-room, the table had only dirty plates and empty dishes on it. However the party----with the
addition of a gentleman, as good-natured, and as rosy, as the children----seated themselves at it very
contentedly.
You have seen people eating cherry-tart, and every now and then cautiously conveying a cherry-stone
from their lips to their plates? Well, something like that went on all through this ghastly----or shall we
say 'ghostly' ?---banquet. An empty fork is raised to the lips: there it receives a neatly-cut piece of mutton,
and swiftly conveys it to the plate, where it instantly attaches itself to the mutton already there. Soon
one of the plates, furnished with a complete slice of mutton and two potatoes, was handed up to the
presiding gentleman, who quietly replaced the slice on the joint, and the potatoes in the dish.
Their conversation was, if possible, more bewildering than their mode of dining. It began by the youngest
girl suddenly, and without provocation, addressing her eldest sister. "Oh, you wicked story-teller!" she
said.
I expected a sharp reply from the sister; but, instead of this, she turned laughingly to her father, and
said, in a very loud stage-whisper, "To be a bride!"
The father, in order to do his part in a conversation that seemed only fit for lunatics, replied "Whisper it
to me, dear."
But she didn't whisper (these children never did anything they were told): she said, quite loud, "Of course
not! Everybody knows what Dotty wants!"
And little Dolly shrugged her shoulders, and said, with a pretty pettishness, "Now, Father, you're not to
tease! You know I don't want to be bride's-maid to anybody!"
"And Dolly's to be the fourth," was her father's idiotic reply.
Here Number Three put in her oar. "Oh, it is settled, Mother dear, really and truly! Mary told us all about
it. It's to be next Tuesday four weeks----and three of her cousins are coming; to be bride's-maids----and----
"
"She doesn't forget it, Minnie!" the Mother laughingly replied. "I do wish they'd get it settled! I don't like
long engagements."
And Minnie wound up the conversation----if so chaotic a series of remarks deserves the name----with
"Only think! We passed the Cedars this morning, just exactly as Mary Davenant was standing at the
gate, wishing good-bye to Mister---I forget his name. Of course we looked the other way."
By this time I was so hopelessly confused that I gave up listening, and followed the dinner down into the
kitchen.
But to you, O hypercritical reader, resolute to believe no item of this weird adventure, what need to tell
how the mutton was placed on the spit, and slowly unroasted----how the potatoes were wrapped in their
skins, and handed over to the gardener to be buried----how, when the mutton had at length attained to
rawness, the fire, which had gradually changed from red-heat to a mere blaze, died down so suddenly