THE FRIENDS’ PARTY.
A few days after came an invitation to Woodburn Grange, from Mrs. Heritage, to a party at Fair Manor. It was a thing that created no little consternation.
“Oh!” said Letty, “I cannot really go! I dare not go for the world! To think only of another such a sermon! It would kill me.”
“No,” said Ann, anxiously, “you, at all events, cannot go, dearest Letty; and I don’t feel to like it by any means myself. What are we to do? what shall we say? And how very odd—the Heritages don’t profess to give parties; they keep an open house, as it were. It is very strange—what can it mean?”
“It means,” said Mr. Woodburn, “I dare say, that Mrs. Heritage feels that she left a gloomy impression the other day behind her, and she is desirous of effacing it by a pleasant party at Fair Manor.”
“A pleasant party at Fair Manor! Oh, dear father, how can a Quaker party be a pleasant party?” exclaimed Letty, walking quickly about the room. And then, laughing in her usual gaiety, “Only to imagine a party of Friends, who neither sing, nor dance, nor play any music, nor any game but fox-and-goose, or drafts or dominoes, and who make such frightful addresses—being a pleasant party! Why, to them a letter from a distance, or a very dull poem indeed, is an excitement. Think of David and Dorothy Qualm, helping to make up a pleasant party! But, really, it is a dilemma! What is to be done?”
“I am sure I don’t know,” said Mrs. Woodburn. “I would not for the world offend dear Mrs. Heritage, nor dear Miss Heritage, they are so good, and, spite of that unlucky sermon, Mrs. Heritage is so wise and remarkable a woman. I think, my dear, you and I and George may go, and let Ann and Letty be gone out. They can go somewhere for a few days.”
“No, no,” said Mr. Woodburn, “I don’t like that sort of women’s subterfuges, to get out of a disagreeable invitation—they are little better than falsehoods. I will tell you now how it will be. It will be a very pleasant and unique affair out in the grounds—they are very pleasant grounds—and you will see, Mrs. Heritage won’t preach a single word. She means to do the kind and restoring thing. We will all go, and be jolly.”
“Jolly!” “Oh, dear father!” “Oh, dear husband!” resounded all round Mr. Woodburn from the ladies. “What an idea! Jolly at a Friends’ tea-drinking!”
Even sobersided Ann, as her father called her, was excessively merry at her father’s notion of a pleasant party.