“He’s just a week younger, Mrs. Johnson, and I wouldn’t tie him for worlds, even if I married him,” I said meekly.  Somehow I like Mrs. Johnson enough to be meek with her, and it always brings her to a higher point of excitement.

“Tie, nonsense; marrying is roping in with ball and chain, to my mind.  And a week between a man and a woman in their cradles gets to be fifteen years between them and their graves.  Well, I must go home now to see that Sally cooks up a few of Mr. Johnson’s crotchets for supper.”  And she began to hurry away.

Marriage is the only worm in the bud of Mrs. Johnson’s life, and her laugh has a snap to it even if it is not very sugary sweet.

When I told Jane about the dinner-party and asked her to get her mother to come and help her, and her nephew to wait at table, she smiled such a wide smile that I was afraid of being swallowed.  She understood that Aunt Adeline wouldn’t be interested in it until I had time to tell her all about it.  Anyway, Aunt will be going over to Springfield on a pilgrimage to see Mr. Henderson’s sister next week.  She doesn’t know it yet; but I do.

After that I spent all the rest of the evening in planning my dinner-party, and I had a most royal good time.  I always have had lots of company, but mostly the spend-the-day kind with relatives, or more relatives to supper.  That’s what most entertaining in Hillsboro is like, but, as I say, once in a while the old slow pacer wakes up.

I’ll never forget my first real party.  I was bridesmaid for Caroline Evans, when she married a Birmingham magnate, from which Hillsboro has never yet recovered.  It was the week before the wedding.  I was sixteen, felt dreadfully unclothed without a tucker in my dress, and saw Alfred for the first time in evening clothes—­his first.  I can hardly stand thinking about how he looked even now.  I haven’t been to very many parties in my life, but from this time on I mean to indulge in them often.  Candle-light, pretty women’s frocks, black coat sleeves, cut glass and flowers are good ingredients for a joy-drink, and why not?

But when I got to planning about the gorgeous food I wanted to give them all, I got into what I feel came near being a serious trouble.  It was writing down the recipe for the nesselrode pudding they make in my family that undid me.  Suddenly hunger rose up from nowhere and gripped me by the throat, gnawed me all over like a bone, then shook me until I was limp and unresisting.  I must have astralised myself down to the pantry, for when I became conscious I found myself in company with a loaf of bread, a plate of butter and a huge jar of jam.

I sat down at the long table by the window and slowly prepared to enjoy myself.  I cut off four slices and buttered them to an equal thickness, and then more slowly put a long silver spoon into the jam.  I even paused to admire in Jane’s mirror over the table the effect of the cascade of lace that fell across my arm and lost itself in the blue shimmer of Madame Rene’s masterpiece of a negligee, then deep down I buried the spoon in the purple sweetness.  I had just lifted it high in the air when out of the lilac-scented dark of the garden came a laugh.