.

And so he would sit and muse, his head in his hand, his well-rounded
legs stretched toward the fire, his white, shapely fingers tapping
the arms of his chair--each click so many telegraphic records of the
workings of his mind.

CHAPTER XXIII

With the closing in of the autumn and the coming of the first winter
cold, the denizens of Kennedy Square gave themselves over to the
season's entertainments. Mrs. Cheston, as was her usual custom, issued
invitations for a ball--this one in honor of the officers who had
distinguished themselves in the Mexican War. Major Clayton, Bowdoin,
the Murdochs, Stirlings, and Howards--all persons of the highest
quality--inaugurated a series of chess tournaments, the several players
and those who came to look on to be thereafter comforted with such
toothsome solids as wild turkey, terrapin, and olio, and such delectable
liquids as were stored in the cellars of their hosts. Old Judge
Pancoast, yielding to the general demand, gave an oyster roast--his
enormous kitchen being the place of all others for such a function. On
this occasion two long wooden tables were scoured to an unprecedented
whiteness--the young girls in white aprons and the young men in white
jackets serving as waiters--and laid with wooden plates, and two big
wooden bowls--one for the hot, sizzling shells just off their bed of
hickory coals banked on the kitchen hearth, and the other for the empty
ones--the fun continuing until the wee sma' hours of the morning.

The Honorable Prim and his charming daughter, not to be outdone by
their neighbors, cleared the front drawing-room of its heavy furniture,
covered every inch of the tufted carpet with linen crash, and with old
black Jones as fiddler and M. Robinette--a French exile--as instructor
in the cutting of pigeon wings and the proper turning out of ankles and
toes, opened the first of a series of morning soirees for the young folk
of the neighborhood, to which were invited not only their mothers, but
their black mammies as well.

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Horn, not having any blithesome daughter, nor any
full-grown son--Oliver being but a child of six--and Richard and his
charming wife having long since given up their dancing-slippers--were
good enough to announce--(and it was astonishing what an excitement it
raised)--that "On the Monday night following Mr. Horn would read aloud,
to such of his friends as would do him the honor of being present, the
latest Christ