osed as an epicure. "I can tell
to an hour just how long asparagus has been picked."

"Fancy eating ordinary market asparagus," said Mrs. Gerard, "that has
been fingered by Heaven knows how many hands."

*****

"Mammy, mammy, wake up," cried Hilda, trying to push open Mrs. Hooven's
eyelids, at last closed. "Mammy, don't. You're just trying to frighten
me."

Feebly Hilda shook her by the shoulder. At last Mrs. Hooven's lips
stirred. Putting her head down, Hilda distinguished the whispered words:

"I'm sick. Go to schleep....Sick....Noddings to eat."

*****

The dessert was a wonderful preparation of alternate layers of biscuit
glaces, ice cream, and candied chestnuts.

"Delicious, is it not?" observed Julian Lambert, partly to himself,
partly to Miss Cedarquist. "This Moscovite fouette--upon my word, I have
never tasted its equal."

"And you should know, shouldn't you?" returned the young lady.

*****

"Mammy, mammy, wake up," cried Hilda. "Don't sleep so. I'm frightenedt."

Repeatedly she shook her; repeatedly she tried to raise the inert
eyelids with the point of her finger. But her mother no longer stirred.
The gaunt, lean body, with its bony face and sunken eye-sockets, lay
back, prone upon the ground, the feet upturned and showing the ragged,
worn soles of the shoes, the forehead and grey hair beaded with fog, the
poor, faded bonnet awry, the poor, faded dress soiled and torn. Hilda
drew close to her mother, kissing her face, twining her arms around
her neck. For a long time, she lay that way, alternately sobbing and
sleeping. Then, after a long time, there was a stir. She woke from a
doze to find a police officer and two or three other men bending over
her. Some one carried a lantern. Terrified, smitten dumb, she was unable
to answer the questions put to her. Then a woman, evidently a mistress
of the house on the top of the hill, arrived and took Hilda in her arms
and cried over her.

"I'll take the little girl," she said to the police officer.

"But the mother, can you save her? Is she too far gone?"

"I've sent for a doctor," replied the other.

*****

Just before the ladies left the table, young Lambert raised his glass of
Madeira. Turning towards the wife of the Railroad King, he said:

"My best compliments for a delightful dinner."

*****

The doctor who had been bending over Mrs. Hooven, rose.

"It's no use," he said; "she has been dead some time--exhaustion from
starvation."