"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 talk it all over next day at school. That," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, when she had finished, "was the kind of a party we used to have in Boston when I was a little girl. I don't know what the little girls have now."
"Boston!" said Luclarion, catching the last words as she came in, with her pink cape bonnet on, from the Homesworth variety and finding store, and post-office. "You'll talk them children off to Boston, finally, Mrs. Ripwinkley! Nothing ever tugs so at one end, but there's something tugging at the other; and there's never a hint nor a hearing to anybody, that something more doesn't turn up concerning it. Here's a letter, Mrs. Ripwinkley!"
Mrs. Ripwinkley took it with some surprise. It was not her sister's handwriting nor Mr. Ledwith's, on the cover; and she rarely had a letter from them that was posted in Boston, now. They had been living at a place out of town for several years. Mrs. Ledwith knew better than to give her letters to her husband for posting. They got lost in his big wallet, and stayed there till they grew old.