“But, my land!” she said, “that was nothin’ to the blow-out on Amy’s sixteenth birthday.  The Colonel had kep’ her pretty close after he took her from school.  She had a governess and she had a maid, but I must say she didn’t seem an atom set up, and was just as nice when she met us girls.  ‘Hello, Betsey,’ she’d say to me.  That’s my name, Betsey, but I call myself ’Lisbeth.  ‘Hello, Betsey,’ I can hear her now, as she cantered past on her pony, in her long blue ridin’ habit.  Sometimes she’d come to the school-house and set on the grass under the apple trees and chew gum with us girls.  That was before her party, which beat anything that was ever seen in Crompton, or will be again.  The avenue and yard and stables were full of carriages, and there were eighteen waiters besides the canterer from Boston.”

“The what?” Eloise asked, and Mrs. Biggs replied, “The canterer, don’t you know, the man who sees to things and brings the vittles and his waiters.  They say he alone cost the Colonel five hundred dollars; but, my land! that’s no more for him than five dollars is for me.  He fairly swims in money.  Such dresses you never seen as there was there that 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.