everybody laughed. She did it so quickly and so prettily, putting
it right into the play. It was good of her not to say, '_So_ says
the Grand Mufti.' At least we thought so then, though Susan Bemys
said it would have been funnier.

"We had a great many plays in those days, and it took a long
afternoon to get through with them. We had not begun to wonder what
we should do next, when tea time came, and we went down into the
basement room. It wasn't tea, though; it was milk in little clear,
pink mugs, some that mother only had out for our parties, and cold
water in crimped-edge glasses, and little biscuits, and
sponge-cakes, and small round pound-cakes frosted. These were what
had smelt so good in the morning.

"We stood round the table; there was not room for all of us to sit,
and mother helped us, and Hannah passed things round. Susan Bemys
took cake three times, and Lucy Waldow opened her eyes wide, and
Fanny Dayton touched me softly under the table.

"After tea mother played and sung some little songs to us; and then
she played the 'Fisher's Hornpipe' and 'Money Musk,' and we danced a
little contra-dance. The girls did not all know cotillons, and some
of them had not begun to go to dancing-school. Father came home and
had his tea after we had done ours, and then he came up into the
parlor and watched us dancing. Mr. Dayton came in, too. At about
half past eight some of the other fathers called, and some of the
mothers sent their girls, and everybody was fetched away. It was
nine o'clock when Laura and I went to bed, and we couldn't go to
sleep until after the clock struck ten, for thinking and saying what
a beautiful time we had had, and anticipating how the girls would