Fanny and Clara sat discussing the dinner, the furniture, and the guests, and both seemed rather out of spirits. The old gentleman walked up and down the piazza, thinking deeply, and Margaret alone looked fresh and happy.
"Who was there, Fanny?" asked she, at length.
"Oh, a stupid set! Excepting ourselves and Mr. and Mrs. Denton, there was not a decent creature there. Nearly all married people and old bachelors. I declare, I have no patience with such incongruous assemblies!"
"There was Mrs. Hildreth's brother! He is quite a beau, I'm sure; and Clara expressed unbounded admiration of his mustaches and whiskers a few days since."
"Yes, he was there, and is certainly a very unexceptionable young man. But what is the use of one beau among four girls? The two Clays were there, looking as forlorn as Shakspeare's nightingale: and Clara monopolized Henry Bell, as though he belonged to her."
"Certainly I did," said Clara; "and so would you, if he had given you the chance. Did you ever see such a dress as Betty Clay had on? She looked like a buckwheat cake in it."
"And Mrs. Stetson's hair, Clara? Did you notice it? Screwed up behind into an almost invisible little _catogan_, and put over her ears so tight that she looked as if she had been in the pillory and came out with her ears off."
"Was the dinner in good style?" again inquired Maggie.
"Yes, but too elaborate. Those people that have not always been upper tens think it necessary to crowd their tables, and ruin one's digestive organs. I declare, I thought I should swoon when that last course came in. I was actually crammed with dinner, and looked forward to dessert with a hope of relief!"
"And those two Charlotte Russes! As if one were not enough, with all that ice-cream and jelly! Mrs. Hildreth said, at least half a dozen times, how careful Soufflée was about having sweet cream, in spite of the scarcity and expense. The idea of hinting to guests the cost of their entertainment! These _parvenu_ people are _too_ absurd. I wish they would learn _bienséance_ before they rise."
"So you had a dull day?" said Margaret, thinking of hers.
"Not precisely dull, but tedious. Laura does torment poor Phillips so, that it makes us uncomfortable; and when people have to 'smile and smile,' as we do, to gloss it over, it seems like that intense desire to gap in stupid company, and the struggle to look as though you merely meant to show now very wide awake you were. I do wish Laura would confine her rudeness to ourselves; but no one ever dared tell her so but Lewis, and he will never trouble himself to do it again."