hotel, and sauntering on with them, insensibly, till they found
themselves on the wide wing-piazza, upon which opened the garden
bedrooms, and being persuaded after all to sit down, since they had got
there, though Mrs. Linceford had demurred at a too hasty rushing over,
as new comers, to begin visits.

"Oh, nobody knows when they _are_ called upon here, or who comes first,"
said Mattie Shannon. "We generally receive half way across the green,
and it's a chance which turns back, or whether we get near either house
again or not. Houses don't signify, except when it rains."

"But it just signifies that you should see how magnificently we have
settled ourselves for nights, and dressing, and when it _does_ rain,"
said Sin Saxon, throwing back a door behind her, that stood a little
ajar. It opened directly into a small apartment, half parlor and half
dressing-room, from which doors showed others, on either side, furnished
as sleeping-rooms.

"It was Maud Walcott's, between the Arnalls' and mine; but, what with
our trunks, and our beds, and our crinolines, and our towel-stands, we
wanted a Bowditch's Navigator to steer clear of the reefs, and
something was always getting knocked over; so, one night, we were seized
simultaneously with an idea. We'd make a boudoir of this for the general
good, and forthwith we fell upon the bed, and amongst us got it down. It
was the greatest fun! We carried the pieces and the mattresses all off
ourselves up to the attic, after ten o'clock, and we gave the
chambermaid a dollar next morning, and nobody's been the wiser since.
And then we walked to the upper village and bought that extraordinary
chintz, and frilled and cushioned our trunks into ottomans, and
curtained the dress-hooks; and Lucinda got us a rocking-chair, and Maud