ic
heart, and I felt for them--I did indeed.

I did not know what on earth to do. Cousin Emily Elizabeth Dempster had
promised to come and take me down to the _Mary Powell_, a steamboat
which the committee had engaged to take itself and all its wives and
their friends, down to welcome the great Grand Duke, and bring him up to
the city.

Cousin Emily Elizabeth's husband was a head cockalorum in this
committee, which being the _creme on creme_--excuse French, it will
break in somehow in spite of me--well, which being the _creme on creme_
that had skimmed itself off from all the common milk of New York
society, puffed Cousin E. E. up like--like a ripe button-ball.

Since my reports have appeared in what the newspapers call the world of
letters--I say it modestly, but truth is truth--Cousin E. E. has been
sweet as maple-sugar to me, I can tell you. She had her eye teeth cut in
Vermont, and understood that Queen Victoria knew there was one notch
above the crown when she took to writing books. I say nothing; but there
is an aristocracy that cuts its own way through all social flummery,
like an eagle among chippen birds. That is real live genius; and if New
England hasn't got her share of that, I don't know where its
head-quarters are.

Well, I and the clouds shed tears together for a good while; then I
started up. "What if it does pour?" says I to myself; "the Grand Duke
has been in storms before this; he ain't sugar nor salt, to melt at
anything less than the glance of a loving eye. What's the good of being
down in the mouth about a little rain? I'll get up--I'll unskewer my
hair--I'll put on _that dress_, if I die for it." I started out of bed;
I stood before the looking-glass; I began to untwist, to unroll; I did
the corkscrew movement; I jerked--I shook my hair out--ripple, ripple,
ripple, it fell over my shoulders. Then I rested awhile, and winked my
eyes with exquisite satisfaction--for freedom is sweet both to the head
and heart.

I felt like a new creature--a delicious looseness settled on my
temples--a feeling of feminine triumph swelled my soul. Could he resist
the fleecy softness of that hair--the thousand ripples breaking up the
sunshine--only there wasn't any sunshine to break. Not a silver thread
was visible; if there had been several the night before, it was nobody's
business but my own. My arms were tired with continual undoing; but,
sisters, am I one to faint by the way? No, no, a thousand times no.