answers the purpose of making believe you are talking when neither of
you is saying a word?"

"Well, now, for my part," said Marianne, "I confess I like parties:
they amuse me. I come home feeling kinder and better to people, just
for the little I see of them when they are all dressed up and in good
humor with themselves. To be sure we don't say anything very
profound,--I don't think the most of us have anything profound to say;
but I ask Mrs. Brown where she buys her lace, and she tells me how she
washes it, and somebody else tells me about her baby, and promises me
a new sack-pattern. Then I like to see the pretty, nice young girls
flirting with the nice young men; and I like to be dressed up a little
myself, even if my finery is all old and many times made over. It does
me good to be rubbed up and brightened."

"Like old silver," said Bob.

"Yes, like old silver, precisely; and even if I do come home tired, it
does my mind good to have that change of scene and faces. You men do
not know what it is to be tied to house and nursery all day, and what
a perfect weariness and lassitude it often brings on us women. For my
part I think parties are a beneficial institution of society, and that
it is worth a good deal of fatigue and trouble to get one up."

"Then there's the expense," said Bob. "What earthly need is there of a
grand regale of oysters, chicken salad, ice-creams, coffee, and
champagne, between eleven and twelve o'clock at night, when no one of
us would ever think of wanting or taking any such articles upon our
stomachs in our own homes? If we were all of us in the habit of having
a regular repast at that hour, it might be well enough to enjoy one
with our neighbor; but the party fare is generally just so much in
addition to the honest three meals which we have eaten during the day.
Now, to spend from fifty to one, two, or three hundred dollars in
giving all our friends an indigestion from a midnight meal seems to me
a very poor investment. Yet if we once begin to give the party, we
must have everything that is given at the other parties, or wherefore
do we live? And caterers and waiters rack their brains to devise new
forms of expense and extravagance; and when the bill comes in, one is
sure to feel that one is paying a great deal of money for a great deal
of nonsense. It is in fact worse than nonsense, because our dear
friends are, in half the cases, not only no better, but a great deal
worse, for what the