must confess, there is something comfortable in having to do with such
things. Don't you feel better, when you've been dancing all the week,
and dining, and going to the opera, and flirting and flying around, to
go to church on Sundays? I do. It seems, somehow, as if we ought to
go. But I do wish Mrs. Croesus would sit somewhere else than just in
front of us, for her new bonnets and her splendid collars and capes
makes me quite miserable: and then she puts me out of conceit of my
things by talking about Lawson, or somebody, as I told you in the
beginning.

Mr. Potiphar has sent out for the new carpets. I had only two spoiled
at my ball, you know, and that was very little. One always expects to
sacrifice at least two carpets upon occasion of seeing one's friends.
That handsome one in the supper room was entirely ruined. Would you
believe that Mr. P. when he went downstairs the next morning, found
our Fred and his cousin hoeing it with their little toes? It was
entirely matted with preserves and things, and the boys said that they
were scraping it clean for breakfast. The other spoiled carpet was in
the gentlemen's dressing-room where the punch-bowl was. Young Gauche
Boosey, a very gentlemanly fellow, you know, ran up after polking, and
was so confused with the light and heat that he went quite unsteadily,
and as he was trying to fill a glass with the silver ladle (which is
rather heavy), he somehow leaned too hard upon the table, and down
went the whole thing, table, bowl, punch, and Boosey, and ended my
poor carpet. I was sorry for that, and also for the bowl, which was a
very handsome one, imported from China by my father's partner--a
wedding gift to me--and for the table, a delicate rosewood stand,
which was a work table of my sister Lucy's--whom you never knew, and
who died long and long ago. However, I was amply repaid by Boosey's
drollery afterward. He is a very witty young man, and when he got up