vent--as the office parlance had it. The ceremonies began at
sunrise with a breakfast to which half a dozen of the captains and kings
of the besieging host of the Pretender were bidden. It seems to have
been a modest orgy, with nothing more astonishing than a new gold-band
china set to dishearten the enemy. By ten o'clock Priscilla Winthrop and
the Whist Club had recovered from that; but they had been asked to the
luncheon--the star feature of the week's round of gayety. It is just as
well to be frank, and say that they went with fear and trembling. Panic
and terror were in their ranks, for they knew a crisis was at hand. It
came when they were "ushered into the dining-hall," as our paper so
grandly put it, and saw in the great oak-beamed room a table laid on the
polished bare wood--a table laid for forty-eight guests, with a doily
for every plate, and every glass, and every salt-cellar, and--here the
mosque fell on the heads of the howling dervishes--forty-eight
soup-spoons, forty-eight silver-handled knives and forks; forty-eight
butter-spreaders, forty-eight spoons, forty-eight salad forks,
forty-eight ice-cream spoons, forty-eight coffee spoons. Little did it
avail the beleaguered party to peep slyly under the spoon-handles--the
word "Sterling" was there, and, more than that, a large, severely plain
"W" with a crest glared up at them from every piece of silver. The
service had not been rented. They knew their case was hopeless. And so
they ate in peace.

When the meal was over it was Mrs. Ellen Vail Montgomery, in her
thousand-dollar gown, worshiped by the eyes of forty-eight women, who
put her arm about Priscilla Winthrop and led her into the conservatory,
where they had "a dear, sweet quarter of an hour," as Mrs. Montgomery
afterward told her hostess. In that dear, sweet quarter of an hour
Priscilla Winthrop Conklin unbuckled her social sword and handed it to
the conqueror, in that she agreed absolutely with Mrs. Montgomery that
Mrs. Worthington was "perfectly lovely," that she was "delighted to be
of any service" to Mrs. Worthington; that Mrs. Conklin "was sure no one
else in our town was so admirably qualified for National Vice" as Mrs.
Worthington, and that "it would be such a privilege" for Mrs. Conklin to
suggest Mrs. Worthington's name for the office. And then Mrs.
Montgomery, "National Vice" and former State Secretary for Vermont of
the Colonial Dames, kissed Priscilla Winthrop and they came forth
wet-eyed