Thus emboldened, she beckoned me mysteriously toward the best parlour, saying as she went, “Lurella seen the picture of a Turkey room in the pattern book, and as she’s goin’ to have a social this spring, she’s fixed a corner of it into our north room.”

When the light was let in I beheld a “cosey corner” composed of a very hard divan covered with a broche shawl, and piled high with pillows of various hues, while a bamboo fishing-pole fastened crosswise between the top of the window frames held a sort of beaded string drapery that hung to the floor in front, and was gathered to the ceiling, in the corner, with a red rosette.  On close examination I found, to my surprise, that the trailers were made of strings of “Job’s Tears,” the seed of a sort of ornamental maize, the thought of the labour that the thing had involved fairly making my eyes ache.

“That is a very pretty shawl,” I remarked, as no other truthful word of commendation seemed possible.

“Yes, it is handsome, and I miss it dreadful.  You see, it belonged to pa’s mother, and I calkerlated to wear it a lifetime for winter best, but the fashion papers do say shawls are out of it, and this is the only use for them, which Lurella holds.  I can’t ever take the same comfert in a bindin’ sack, noway; and pa, he’s that riled about the shawl bein’ used to set on, I daren’t leave the door open.  Says the whole thing’s a ’poke hole,’ and the curt’in recollects him of ‘strings of spinnin’ caterpillars,’ and ’no beau that’s worth his shoes won’t ever get caught in no such trap,’ which is most tryin’ to Lurella, so I hev to act pleased, and smooth things over best I can.”

Well-a-day, it is always easier to answer the riddles that puzzle others, rather than those that confront ourselves.

Fully a year ago Mrs. Jenks-Smith gave me a well-meaning hint that it is not “good form” for me to allow father or Evan to smoke while we drive or walk in public together.  The very next night we three happened to be dining, why I don’t know, at the most socially advanced house on the Bluffs.  When the moment came for the midway pause in the rotation of foods, that we might tamp down and make secure what we had already eaten by the aid of Roman punch, the gentlemen very nearly discounted the effort, as far as I was concerned at least, by smoking cigarettes, leaning easily back in their chairs, and with no more than a vague “by your leave,” to the ladies.  What was more, there was a peculiarly sickening sweet odour to the smoke that father afterward told me was because the tobacco was tinctured with opium.  Yet it is “bad form” for Evan and father to smoke in my society, out in the road or street under the big generous roof of the sky.  Dear little boys, I wonder what the custom will be when you are grown, and read your mother’s social experience book?

* * * * *

The present crisis to be faced is in the form of a wedding,—­an apple-blossom wedding, to take place in St. Peter’s Church.  I have been made a confident in the matter from the very beginning of the wayside comedy which led to it; but I wish it understood that I am not responsible for the list of invited guests, or the details of the ceremony, which have been laboriously compiled from many sources, any more than I shall be for the heartburnings that are sure to follow in its wake.