se to ask about ball-dresses, instead of giving
instruction, was a mean sort of business. But the ambition of a great,
worldly idea was burning in my bosom, and I resolved to press forward to
the mark of the prize of the high calling.

Mercy on me! it is a ball-dress, not a class-meeting, that I am writing
about. Oh, my sisters! is it true that black angels and white angels
ever do get to fighting in a human soul, just as they do down South? If
so, they had a tussle in my bosom that morning, and the black fellow
came out best, with a gorgeous silk dress a-floating and a-rustling out
from his triumphant right hand, and the splendid shadow of a great Grand
Duke following after.

Cousin Emily Elizabeth was just coming downstairs, flounced and puffed
and tucked up about the waist, till she was all over in a flutter of
silk, and lace, and black beads, with a dashing bonnet on her head high
enough for a trooper's training-cap, all shivery with lace and bows,
with one long feather curling half way round it, and a white tuft
sticking up straight on the top, looking so 'cute and saucy.

Emily Elizabeth looked a little scared when she saw me coming in with my
satchel; but when I told her what I wanted, her eyes brightened up, and
she laughed as easy as a blackbird sings. "Oh, is that all!" says she.
"I thought it was about the children. I'll give you a note to my
dress-maker. Styles all French, and _so recherche_." Look in the
dictionary, sisters, and you will discover that this means something
first-class.

She took out a pencil and a square piece of paper with her name printed
on it, and wrote something French, with the number of a house, which I
won't give, not wanting any of my friends to be talked out of a year's
growth, as I was.

"There," says she. "The cream-on-cream all go to her. She'll fit you out
splendidly. Leave it all to her. Good-morning, cousin; I must go; but my
daughter is in the drawing-room--she will entertain you."

"Just so," says I, putting the card in my satchel, and making swift
tracks for the out-door; "but I haven't time to be entertained."

VIII.

THE GENUINE MADAME.

Well, I went straight down to that dress-maker's house, and handed the
square paper cousin had written on to a lady who was fluttering round
among a lot of girls, all hard at work sewing, like bumble-bees in a
rose-bush.

She looked at the paper; then she gave my alpaca dress an overhauling
with her scornful eyes. Th