rflowing with fun, and enjoyed it all very much. I could
see he was nearly choking sometimes at Kitty's unnecessary 'Yis,
sur-rs.' She never passed me a plate without giving me a poke; and, I
dare say, reminded papa and mamma of her existence in the same way.

"As she had prophesied, they excused themselves after dinner, and went
to the library,--all but Mr. Bruce, who had no interest in South
America. He had an engagement, and so left us in the course of half an
hour. Conceive our amusement, when, just after we left the table,
Kitty entered with a note on a waiter, and a message purporting to be
from Miss Harriet Wolfe, to the effect that she would call for mamma
to go to an afternoon concert the next day. I was just leaving the
room as she entered; and I can tell you I hurried a bit after that;
and, as I looked around at mamma to see how she bore it, she was
holding a fan before her face, in a perfect convulsion of laughter;
and there stood that wicked Kate, with her hands folded, waiting
solemnly for the answer. Poor Miss Wolfe had died some years before,
and had been stone-deaf at that! How mamma gave the answer, or excused
her amusement, I have forgotten. Kitty did it, as she said then, for a
grand finale to her masquerading; but as she says now, and I firmly
believed at the time, for a parting look at the Englishman.

"He went away, and Kitty came into the parlor, and we had a great
laugh over our dinner-party; and the next day it was told to an
admiring audience of three,--grandmamma and my two aunts; but I think
the story never went any farther, as we did not even dare to tell my
brothers. Ann probably wonders to this day who took her place.

"The next Monday we went back to our two boarding-schools, and after a
while we forgot the whole affair. Kitty finished school with high
honors in July, and 'came out' in November, and was a great belle in
Boston all that winter. I, in durance vile at Mrs. Walkintwo's, read
her journal-letters to a select circle of friends; and they were a
green spot in our so-considered desert of life.

"Towards the last of the winter, papa's sister, for whom Kate was
named, and who was very fond of her, sent for my sister to come to her
for a visit of a few weeks during my uncle's absence. She wrote she
would not have to suspend her pleasure in the least, as there had
never been more gayety in Baltimore than at that time; and some young
friends of Kitty's had that very day come from Eu