"And Mrs. Stetson's hair, Clara? Did you notice it? Screwed up behind into an almost invisible little catogan, and put over her ears so tight that she looked as if she had been in the pillory and came out with her ears off."
"Was the dinner in good style?" again inquired Maggie.
"Yes, but too elaborate. Those people that have not always been upper tens think it necessary to crowd their tables, and ruin one's digestive organs. I declare, I thought I should swoon when that last course came in. I was actually crammed with dinner, and looked forward to dessert with a hope of relief!"
"And those two Charlotte Russes! As if one were not enough, with all that ice-cream and jelly! Mrs. Hildreth said, at least half a dozen times, how careful Soufflée was about having sweet cream, in spite of the scarcity and expense. The idea of hinting to guests the cost of their entertainment! These parvenu people are too absurd. I wish they would learn bienséance before they rise."
"So you had a dull day?" said Margaret, thinking of hers.
"Not precisely dull, but tedious. Laura does torment poor Phillips so, that it makes us uncomfortable; and when people have to 'smile and smile,' as we do, to gloss it over, it seems like that intense desire to gap in stupid company, and the struggle to look as though you merely meant to show now very wide awake you were. I do wish Laura would confine her rudeness to ourselves; but no one ever dared tell her so but Lewis, and he will never trouble himself to do it again."
"I wonder what he is doing now!" said Fanny. "I declare, I almost forgot his existence. And that horrid woman, too! She had better do something for herself, before she causes her husband to beg!"
"Depend upon it, Fanny, neither Lewis nor Cora would do that."
"Oh! you are their sworn champion, Margaret, we all know. But you cannot do them any good, child—be sure of it. I wish she would go home, or make Lewis mad, so that he could send her there."
"Fanny!" cried Margaret, shocked, "how unfeeling!"