“It will all come right,” the Deacon said to himself,—­“I feel a joyful conviction that everything is for the best.  I am favored with a blessed peace of mind, and a very precious season of good feelin’ toward my fellow-creturs.”

A lusty young fellow happened to make a quick step backward just at that instant, and put his heel, with his weight on top of it, upon the Deacon’s toes.

“Aigh!  What the d’ d’ didos are y’ abaout with them great huffs o’ yourn?” said the Deacon, with an expression upon his features not exactly that of peace and good-will to men.  The lusty young fellow apologized; but the Deacon’s face did not come right, and his theology backed round several points in the direction of total depravity.

Some of the dashing young men in stand-up collars and extensive neckties, encouraged by Mr. Geordie, made quite free with the “Ma,dary,” and even induced some of the more stylish girls—­not of the mansion-house set, but of the tip-top two-story families—­to taste a little.  Most of these young ladies made faces at it, and declared it was “perfectly horrid,” with that aspect of veracity peculiar to their age and sex.

About this time a movement was made on the part of some of the mansion-house people to leave the supper-table.  Miss Jane Trecothick had quietly hinted to her mother that she had had enough of it.  Miss Arabella Thornton had whispered to her father that he had better adjourn this court to the next room.  There were signs of migration,—­a loosening of people in their places,—­a looking about for arms to hitch on to.

“Stop!” said the Colonel.  “There’s something coming yet.—­Ice-cream!”

The great folks saw that the play was not over yet, and that it was only polite to stay and see it out.  The word “ice-cream” was no sooner whispered than it passed from one to another all down the tables.  The effect was what might have been anticipated.  Many of the guests had never seen this celebrated product of human skill, and to all the two-story population of Rockland it was the last expression of the art of pleasing and astonishing the human palate.  Its appearance had been deferred for several reasons:  first, because everybody would have attacked it, if it had come in with the other luxuries; secondly, because undue apprehensions were entertained (owing to want of experience) of its tendency to deliquesce and resolve itself with alarming rapidity into puddles of creamy fluid; and, thirdly, because the surprise would make a grand climax to finish off the banquet.

There is something so audacious in the conception of ice-cream, that it is not strange that a population undebauched by the luxury of great cities looks upon it with a kind of awe and speaks of it with a certain emotion.  This defiance of the seasons, forcing Nature to do her work of congelation in the face of her sultriest noon, might well inspire a timid mind with fear lest human art were revolting against the