CHAPTER III.

GOES TO A TEA-PARTY.

The Widow Jones got her stockings the next day. As I left them at the door she stuck her head out of an upper window and said to me that "the sewing society met at her house on Thursday afternoon, and the men-folks was coming to tea and to spend the evening, and I must be sure an' come, or the girls would be so disappointed," and she urged and urged until I had to promise her I would attend her sociable.

Drat all tea-parties! say I. I was never comfortable at one in my life. If you'd give me my choice between going to a tea-party and picking potato-bugs off the vines all alone on a hot summer day, I shouldn't hesitate a moment between the two. I should choose the bugs; and I can't say I fancy potato-bugs, either.

On Wednesday I nearly killed an old lady, putting up tartar-emetic for cream-tartar. If she'd eaten another biscuit made with it she'd have died and I'd have been responsible—and father was really vexed and said I might be a light-house keeper as quick as I pleased; but by that time I felt as if I couldn't keep a light-house without Belle Marigold to help me, and so I[32] promised to be more careful, and kept on clerking.

[32]

The thermometer stood at eighty degrees in the shade when I left the store at five o'clock Thursday afternoon to go to that infallible tea-party. I was glad the day was warm, for I wanted to wear my white linen suit, with a blue cravat and Panama hat. I felt independent even of Fred Hencoop, as I walked along the street under the shade of the elms; but, the minute I was inside Widow Jones' gate and walking up to the door, the thermometer went up to somewhere near 200 degrees. There were something like a dozen heads at each of the parlor windows, and all women's heads at that. Six or eight more were peeping out of the sitting-room, where they were laying the table for tea. Babbletown always did seem to me to have more than its fair share of female population. I think I would like to live in one of those mining towns out in Colorado, where women are as scarce as hairs on the inside of a man's hand. Somebody coughed as I was going up the walk. Did you ever have a girl cough at you?—one of those mean, teasing, expressive little coughs?

I had practiced—at home in my own room—taking off my Panama with a graceful, sweeping bow, and saying in calm, well-bred tones: "Good-evening, Mrs. Jones. Good-evening, ladies. I trust you have had a pleasant as well as profitable afternoon."[33]

 Prev. P 13/121 next