CHAPTER XVIII.
THE HOTEL MISSIONARY MEETING.
“It was an elegant sewing-meeting,” Marty confided to her mother when she got home Tuesday evening, “and it wasn't a bit like that one Aunt Henrietta had the last time we were in Rochester. I liked this one best. There, you know, the ladies came all dressed up, carrying little velvet or satin work-bags, and we just had thin bread and butter and such things for tea—nothing very good. Here some of the ladies—of course I mean the ones from the village—came in calico dresses and sun-bonnets. And they were so free and easy—sewed fast and talked fast while they were there; and then if they had to go home a little bit, they'd just pop on their bonnets and off they'd go. Mrs. Clarkson thought it was going to rain, and she ran home to take in her wash, and another lady went home two or three times to see how her dinner was getting on.
“Some of them stayed at the hotel to dinner, and all that did stay brought something with them, pies mostly, though some brought pickles, preserves, and frosted cake. And every time Mrs. Dutton saw something being smuggled through the hall she'd call out,
“'Now I told you not to bring anything. The dinner is my part of this missionary meeting.'
“Then they'd all laugh. They were all real kind and pleasant. And such a dinner! I do believe we had some of everything. And supper was just the same way.”
The hotel, though the boast of the surrounding country, was a very plain establishment, being nothing more than a tolerably large, simply furnished frame house accommodating about forty persons. But it was bright and home-like and beautifully situated.
“Mrs. Thurston's meeting,” as they called it, was held in the large, uncarpeted dining-room, and the dinner tables were set in the shady back yard.