A GAY COMPANY AT HAZELDEAN.
The week that followed was one never to be forgotten. Such feasting and merry-making, such excursions, and card parties, and dancing parties Mona had never witnessed.
She had read of such scenes occurring in the great manor-houses of England, and had often thought that she should like to witness something of the kind; but she did not imagine that Americans had yet attained the art of displaying such magnificent hospitality. It was a carnival, indeed, from the evening of their arrival until the morning of their departure.
It was the month of February, there was no snow on the ground, and the weather was very mild and more like early spring, than winter, so that every morning there was planned an excursion of some kind—either a drive or a canter on horseback to different points of interest in that picturesque section, which everybody appeared to enjoy as well as if all nature had been at the height of its glory in midsummer.
Mona, of course, was never invited to join these excursions; she was regarded as nothing but a seamstress or a maid, and most of the company would have scorned the idea of thus associating with her upon equal terms.
Her heart often swelled with bitter pain as she watched a gay cavalcade ride away through the park, for she dearly loved horseback riding, and she well knew that six months previous she would have been most cordially welcomed by every member of that merry company.
She wondered what had become of her pretty saddle-horse, Jet, and her uncle's proud steed, Banquo, and sighed regretfully as she reviewed the happy past, when they four—for the horses had seemed almost human—had roamed over the country together. She sometimes even longed to be back in New York among her piles of sewing, for she had not enough to do now to occupy her time, and it often hung heavily on her hands, thus allowing painful memories to depress her.
The third morning after their arrival, just as a gay party was on the point of starting off, Mona, being at liberty, thought she would slip down to the library and try to find an entertaining book to pass away the long hours before lunch.
She was half-way down stairs, when Kitty McKenzie came running breathlessly back, looking flushed and exceedingly disappointed over something.
"Oh, dear!" she cried, as she was passing Mona; "I tripped in my riding-habit, and have ripped the facing so badly that I must change it and go in the carriage with mamma. It is too bad, for I had the loveliest pony to ride."