The Last Rose of Summer

Cover
Deborah at dressing table
THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER
RUPERT HUGHES
Author of What Will People Say?
HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXIV
COPYRIGHT 1914, BY HARPER AND BROTHERS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1914
THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER
CHAPTER I
As Mrs. Shillaber often said, the one good thing about her old house was the fact that you could throw the dining-room into the poller when you wanted to give parties or funerals or weddings or such things. You had only to fold up the accordeon-pleated doors, push the sofa back against the wall, and lay a rug over the register.
To-night she had thrown the dining-room into the poller and filled both rooms with guests. There were so many guests that they occupied every seat in the house, including the up-stairs chairs and a large batch of camp-stools from Mr. Crankshaw's, the undertaker's.
In Carthage it was never a real party or an important funeral unless those perilous old man-traps of Mr. Crankshaw's appeared. They always added a dash of excitement to the dullest evening, for at a critical moment one of them could be depended upon to collapse beneath some guest, depositing him or her in a small but complicated woodpile on the floor.