“Send up Victorine.”  “Victorine, full toilet for this evening,—­pink, diamonds, and emeralds.  Coiffeur at seven.  Allez.”—­Billionism, or even millionism, must be a blessed kind of state, with health and clear conscience and youth and good looks,—­but most blessed is this, that it takes off all the mean cares which give people the three wrinkles between the eyebrows, and leaves them free to have a good time and make others have a good time, all the way along from the charity that tips up unexpected loads of wood before widows’ houses, and leaves foundling turkeys upon poor men’s door-steps, and sets lean clergymen crying at the sight of anonymous fifty-dollar bills, to the taste which orders a perfect banquet in such sweet accord with every sense that everybody’s nature flowers out full—­blown in its golden—­glowing, fragrant atmosphere.

—­A great party given by the smaller gentry of the interior is a kind of solemnity, so to speak.  It involves so much labor and anxiety,—­its spasmodic splendors are so violently contrasted with the homeliness of every-day family-life,—­it is such a formidable matter to break in the raw subordinates to the manege of the cloak-room and the table,—­there is such a terrible uncertainty in the results of unfamiliar culinary operations,—­so many feuds are involved in drawing that fatal line which divides the invited from the uninvited fraction of the local universe,—­that, if the notes requested the pleasure of the guests’ company on “this solemn occasion,” they would pretty nearly express the true state of things.

The Colonel himself had been pressed into the service.  He had pounded something in the great mortar.  He had agitated a quantity of sweetened and thickened milk in what was called a cream-freezer.  At eleven o’clock, A. M., he retired for a space.  On returning, his color was noted to be somewhat heightened, and he showed a disposition to be jocular with the female help,—­which tendency, displaying itself in livelier demonstrations than were approved at head-quarters, led to his being detailed to out-of-door duties, such as raking gravel, arranging places for horses to be hitched to, and assisting in the construction of an arch of wintergreen at the porch of the mansion.

A whiff from Mr. Geordie’s cigar refreshed the toiling females from time to time; for the windows had to be opened occasionally, while all these operations were going on, and the youth amused himself with inspecting the interior, encouraging the operatives now and then in the phrases commonly employed by genteel young men,—­for he had perused an odd volume of “Verdant Green,” and was acquainted with a Sophomore from one of the fresh-water colleges.  “Go it on the feed!” exclaimed this spirited young man.  “Nothin’ like a good spread.  Grub enough and good liquor, that’s the ticket.  Guv’nor’ll do the heavy polite, and let me alone for polishin’ off the young charmers.”  And Mr. Geordie looked expressively at a handmaid who was rolling gingerbread, as if he were rehearsing for “Don Giovanni.”