and I told her I'd
go, and I am to be there at half-past seven sharp, and to wear my
meetin' clothes.'

'Invited to the party! What do you mean? Only grown up people are to be
there,' Mrs. Crawford said.

'Yes, I know;' replied Harold, 'but I'm not to be with the _grown-ups_.
I'm to stay in the upper hall and tell 'em where to go.'

'Oh, you are to be a _waiter_,' was Mrs. Crawford's rather contemptuous
remark, which Harold did not heed in his excitement.

'Yes, I'm to be at the head of the stairs, and somebody else at the
bottom; and they are to have fiddlin and dancin'; I've never seen
anybody dance; and ice-cream and cake, with something like plaster all
over it, and oranges and grapes, and, oh, everything! Dick St. Claire
told me; he knows; his mother has had parties, and she's going to-night,
and her gown is crimson velvet, with black and white fur in it like our
cat, only they don't call it that; and--oh, I forgot--they have had a
telegraph, and I took it to Mrs. Tracy, who looked mad and almost cried
when she read it, Mr. Arthur Tracy is coming home to-night.'

Harold had talked so fast that his grandmother could hardly follow him,
but she understood what he said last, and started as if he had struck
her a blow.

'Arthur Tracy! Coming home to-night!' she exclaimed. 'Oh, I am so glad,
so glad.'

'But Mrs. Tracy did not seem to be, and I guess she wanted to stop the
party,' Harold said, repeating as nearly as he could what had passed
between him and the lady.

Harold was full of the party to which he believed he had been invited,
and when in the afternoon Dick St. Claire came to the cottage to play
with him, he felt a kind of patronizing pity for his friend who was not
to share his honor.

'Perhaps mother will let me come over and help you,' Dick said, 'I know
how they do it. You mustn't talk to the people as they come up the
stairs, nor even say good-evening, only;

'"Ladies will please walk this way, and gentlemen that!"

And Dick went through with a pantomime performance for the benefit of
Harold, who, when the drill was over, felt himself competent to receive
the Queen's guests at the head of the great staircase in Windsor Castle.

'Yes, I know,' he said, '"Ladies this way, and gentlemen that;" but when
am I to go down and see the dancing and get some ice-cream?'

On this point Dick was doubtful. He did not believe, he said, that
waiters ever went down to see the dancing, or to get ice cream, un