"Daughter!" almost shrieked Cousin Emily E., a-catching her breath, and giving a frightened look over my way.
"My child, how can you be so rude?" says Cousin Dempster, stamping down among the fur robes, and mashing my foot under the sole of his boot.
I said nothing, but sat in dignified silence, wishing those two persons to feel that it was impossible the creature could mean me, but I trembled all over with righteous indignation, and wondered why that Bible benefactor, King Herod, had limited himself to boys, when he had such a glorious chance to sweep creatures like that out of existence in the female line. Oh! if I had been a Bible potentate!
"She was so anxious to go, being born in Vermont," says Cousin Emily Elizabeth; "it seems as if she knew Mr. Greeley."
"Reads the Tribune every day," chimes in Cousin Dempster, giving me a pleading look.
"I'll thank you to take the heel of your boot off my foot, if you have held it there long enough," says I, with the firmness of a martyr and the dignity of an empress.
This wilted the whole party into silence, and we drove on, with the hail pelting against the windows, and lowering clouds inside.
All at once we got into a long line of carriages, and moved on as if we were going to a funeral instead of a birthday. Then the carriage stopped, the door was flung open, and we stepped under a long tent that stretched from the front door down a flight of stone steps and across the sidewalk. A carpet ran down the steps to the carriage, and we walked up that into the house; then through a hall, and upstairs, where we took off our cloaks and titivated up a little in a room half full of ladies, and blocked up with cloaks and things. I let down Cousin E. E.'s dress, and she let down mine; then we shook each other out, took an observation of each other from head to foot, tightened the buttons of our gloves, and went into the hall.
There stood Cousin Dempster, with his white gloves on, and a white cravat with lace edges around his neck, looking so gentlemanly. We went downstairs Indian file, for a stream of people were going down on one side all crimlicued off most gorgeously; and another stream was going up, with cloaks and hoods on, so there was no locking arms till we got into the lower hall. Then we just tackled in. I took one arm, E. E. took the other, and that creature followed after, looking like an infantile Black Crook in her short muslin skirts and bunched-up sash.