nd caught him by the baggy
reverse of his more essential garment.

"Hush!" said Mrs. Sprowle,--"there 's the bell!"

Everybody took position at once, and began to look very smiling and
altogether at ease.--False alarm. Only a parcel of spoons,--"loaned,"
as the inland folks say when they mean lent, by a neighbor.

"Better late than never!" said the Colonel, "let me heft them spoons."

Mrs. Sprowle came down into her chair again as if all her bones had been
bewitched out of her.

"I'm pretty nigh beat out a'ready," said she, "before any of the folks
has come."

They sat silent awhile, waiting for the first arrival. How nervous they
got! and how their senses were sharpened!

"Hark!" said Miss Matilda,--"what 's that rumblin'?"

It was a cart going over a bridge more than a mile off, which at any
other time they would not have heard. After this there was a lull, and
poor Mrs. Sprowle's head nodded once or twice. Presently a crackling and
grinding of gravel;--how much that means, when we are waiting for those
whom we long or dread to see! Then a change in the tone of the
gravel-crackling.

"Yes, they have turned in at our gate. They're comin'! Mother! mother!"

Everybody in position, smiling and at ease. Bell rings. Enter the first
set of visitors. The Event of the Season has begun.

"Law! it's nothin' but the Cranes' folks! I do believe Mahala 's come in
that old green de-laine she wore at the Surprise Party!"

Miss Matilda had peeped through a crack of the door and made this
observation and the remark founded thereon. Continuing her attitude of
attention, she overheard Mrs. Crane and her two daughters conversing in
the attiring-room, up one flight.

"How fine everything is in the great house!" said Mrs. Crane,--"jest
look at the picters!"

"Matildy Sprowle's drawin's," said Ada Azuba, the eldest daughter.

"I should think so," said Mahala Crane, her younger sister,--a wide-awake
girl, who had n't been to school for nothing, and performed a little on
the lead pencil herself. "I should like to know whether that's a
hay-cock or a mountain!"

Miss Matilda winced; for this must refer to her favorite monochrome,
executed by laying on heavy shadows and stumping them down into mellow
harmony,--the style of drawing which is taught in six lessons, and the
kind of specimen which is executed in something less than one hour.
Parents and other very near relatives are sometimes gratified with these
pro