"I—I was surprised to meet you here!"
"I came because I wanted to see what it would be like, but I had no conception it would be so bad. Did you ever see such a set as she has collected?"
"It does seem mixed."
"Unmixed, I should call it. I have been waiting for half an hour to see a soul of my acquaintance. Sit down here, and let us have a nice talk."
A nice talk with Mrs. Thorndike Freeman foreboded a dead cut from her the next time you met her; for she never took anyone up without as violently putting them down again—and then there was no one now to see and envy. However, Miss Snow dared not refuse, and seating herself with a conciliatory, frightened air, somewhat like a little dog in the cage of a lioness, asked in timid tones:
"Why do you stay? Is not your carriage here?"
"I want to get something to eat first," said Mrs. Freeman, "for I suppose their spread is something indescribable."
"Oh, quite! The whole middle of the table is a mass of American Beauty roses as large as—as cabbages, and around that a bank of mignonette like—like small cauliflowers, and all over beneath it is covered with hothouse maiden-hair ferns, and——"
"And what's the grub?"
"I—did not eat much; I only wanted to see it; but I had a delicious little paté—chicken done in cream, somehow; and I saw aspic jelly with something in it handed round; and the ices—they are all in floral devices, water lilies floating on spun sugar, and roses in gold baskets, and cherries tied in bunches with ribbons, and grapes lying on tinted Bohemian glass leaves—and———"