While my host and I sat at a side-table, sipping a little excellent old Cognac, with just a dash of ice water in it (a bad practice, a very bad practice, by the by, my boys, which I would strenuously counsel you not to fall into; but an inveterate habit acquired by an old soldier when no one thought of it being very wrong) the lively chit-chat in the drawing-room occasionally reached my ears.
"It was tissue, I am quite sure!" said Miss ——.
"No matter about the material—the color would have redeemed anything!" cried Grace.
"Sea-green!" chimed in the flute notes of another of the gay junto, "what can equal the General's verdancy?"
"What?" (here I recognized the animated voice of the lady of the mansion); "why, only his mauvais ton, in 'congratulating' me upon having 'so many' at my reception for Governor and Mrs. ——, the other evening, and his equally flattering assurance that he had not seen so 'brilliant a military turn-out in a long time'—meaning, of course, his elegant self! You are mistaken, however, Laura, about his coat being of tissue, it was lawn, and had just come home from his lawn-dress, when he put it on. I distinctly saw the mark of the smoothing-iron on the cuff, as well as that his wristband was soiled considerably."
"He had only had time to 'change' his coat since he went 'home with the girls in the morning,'" chimed in some one, "and his hair, I noticed as he rose to make what he called his 'farewell bow of exit,' was filled with the dust of that dirty ball-room."
"Which couldn't be brushed out without taking out the curl, too, I suppose!" This last sally
emanated I believe, from one of the most amiable, usually, of the group.
"Well," said the hostess, with a half-sigh of relief, "he seldom inflicts himself upon me! His grand entrée this morning, in the character of a katy-did, gotten up à la mode naturelle," (here there was a general clapping of hands, accompanied by bravos that would have rejoiced the heart of a prima donna), "was, no doubt, occasioned by his having heard some one say that, what vulgar people style a 'party call,' was incumbent upon him after my reception. What a pity his informant had not also enlightened him on another point of ettiquetty, as old Mr. Smith calls it, and so spared me the mortification, my dears, of presenting to you, as a specimen of the beaux of ——, and one of the aids-de-camp of Governor ——, a man making a visit of ceremony in a bright, pea-green, thin muslin shooting-jacket!"