“Yes, they have turned in at our gate.  They’re comin’!  Mother! mother!”

Everybody in position, smiling and at ease.  Bell rings.  Enter the first set of visitors.  The Event of the Season has begun.

“Law! it’s nothin’ but the Cranes’ folks!  I do believe Mahala ’s come in that old green de-laine she wore at the Surprise Party!”

Miss Matilda had peeped through a crack of the door and made this observation and the remark founded thereon.  Continuing her attitude of attention, she overheard Mrs. Crane and her two daughters conversing in the attiring-room, up one flight.

“How fine everything is in the great house!” said Mrs. Crane,—­“jest look at the picters!”

“Matildy Sprowle’s drawin’s,” said Ada Azuba, the eldest daughter.

“I should think so,” said Mahala Crane, her younger sister,—­a wide-awake girl, who had n’t been to school for nothing, and performed a little on the lead pencil herself.  “I should like to know whether that’s a hay-cock or a mountain!”

Miss Matilda winced; for this must refer to her favorite monochrome, executed by laying on heavy shadows and stumping them down into mellow harmony,—­the style of drawing which is taught in six lessons, and the kind of specimen which is executed in something less than one hour.  Parents and other very near relatives are sometimes gratified with these productions, and cause them to be framed and hung up, as in the present instance.

“I guess we won’t go down jest yet,” said Mrs. Crane, “as folks don’t seem to have come.”

So she began a systematic inspection of the dressing-room and its conveniences.

“Mahogany four-poster;—­come from the Jordans’, I cal’la,te.  Marseilles quilt.  Ruffles all round the piller.  Chintz curtings,—­jest put up,—­o’ purpose for the party, I’ll lay ye a dollar.—­What a nice washbowl!” (Taps it with a white knuckle belonging to a red finger.) “Stone chaney.—­Here’s a bran’-new brush and comb,—­and here’s a scent-bottle.  Come here, girls, and fix yourselves in the glass, and scent your pocket-handkerchers.”

And Mrs. Crane bedewed her own kerchief with some of the eau de Cologne of native manufacture,—­said on its label to be much superior to the German article.

It was a relief to Mrs. and the Miss Cranes when the bell rang and the next guests were admitted.  Deacon and Mrs. Soper,—­Deacon Soper of the Rev. Mr. Fairweather’s church, and his lady.  Mrs. Deacon Soper was directed, of course, to the ladies’ dressing-room, and her husband to the other apartment, where gentlemen were to leave their outside coats and hats.  Then came Mr. and Mrs. Briggs, and then the three Miss Spinneys, then Silas Peckham, Head of the Apollinean Institute, and Mrs. Peckham, and more after them, until at last the ladies’ dressing-room got so full that one might have thought it was a trap none of them could get out of.  In truth, they all felt a little awkwardly.  Nobody wanted to be first to venture down-stairs.  At last Mr. Silas Peckham thought it was time to make a move for the parlor, and for this purpose presented himself at the door of the ladies’ dressing-room.