About this time all the papers were giving considerable attention in the columns which they headed variously: "Social Doings," "Among the Four Hundred,"—a phrase just then coming into notoriety,—"The Society Calendar," etc., to Mrs. Pallinder's house-party. That lady herself, her establishment, her clothes, her diamonds had provided us with gossip, as I have endeavoured to show, for the past two years. But if we were inured to Mrs. Pallinder, Miss Muriel Ponsonby-Baxter was something new. Everyone entertained for her; it was a matter of pride with us to give our English girl-visitor an unapproachably "good time," to prove to her how much the best country in this best of all possible worlds America was for the young, well-born, well-mannered, good-looking, and happy—ourselves, in short. Not one of us had the slightest acquaintance with English society; but we were confident our own was immeasurably better. Twenty-five years ago, it must be remembered, there was a chillier feeling between the two countries; and, of course, our provincialism accented it. The eagle ramped upon his perch; the lion suffered a deal of tail-twisting; hands across the sea were not quite so fervent in their clasp then as now. Our demagogues flung about dark hints concerning the machinations of the "Cobden Club." American protectionists, American free-traders bellowed themselves purple in the face from the stump in defence of their several creeds, and strangely enough, found in England equally an awful example, and a beacon-light of progress! The last, for obvious reasons, was a very unpopular view; in those Arcadian days the main diversion of a certain class of our politicians was the ferocious baiting of perfidious Albion. The Oriental-war scares, the race-problems, the anti-trust, and anti-railroad agitations of to-day must cause these amiable jingoes—a name, by the way, which they never heard—to turn in their graves. Bless thee, Bottom, how art thou translated! In that year, the Pendleton Civil-Service Reform Bill was the most important measure before the two Houses; and "to the victors belong the spoils," was the cry most frequently raised against it. That admirable argument, at once so condensed and so forcible, what respectable person would dare to utter it to-day? Blaine was alive; Tilden was alive; Ben Butler was governor of Massachusetts, he of fragrant memory, house-cleaner of New Orleans, promulgator of Regulation 19—or was it 29? Iram indeed is gone with all his rose, and Ben and all the rest along with him; and we have ceased, at a woeful expense, to be provincial. We were not bothering our heads then, about tropical canals and the Philippines—oh, all-but-forgotten Golden Age!

We were not always certain what sort of impression we were making on Muriel; and, however eager we might have been to find out, there are some questions any girl would go to the scaffold rather than ask. But I know that on one point we were intolerably vain; perhaps that vanity was the most honest, creditable, endearing quality we possessed; and something of the same feeling stirs me even now. Where, where on this globe, we asked ourselves triumphantly, would Muriel find anything to match the ready deference, the kind, half-humorous, wholly charming devotion of the American man to his womankind? Indeed, it was plain to see she was unused to this Sir Walter Raleigh attitude; she was as much puzzled as pleased by it. I think we were somewhat disposed to patronise her; and Kitty Oldham declared openly she didn't believe Miss Baxter had ever had an offer in her life. She was an exceptionally handsome girl; she must have had a far wider social experience than ours; but, for all that, and in spite of her size and the splendid unconscious ease of her bearing, we detected in her a curious timidity. It suited her. Had she attempted to imitate the brisk, fearless, autocratic American girl, she would have been merely a big hoyden. There was, after all, something sweet in her naÏve tactlessness, her awkward conscientious efforts at adapting herself to ways she could not understand, and perhaps at heart, did not really like. To one of us, at least, the association was not without profit. I used to feel that someone ought in conscience to explain Mrs. Botlisch to Muriel, to apologise for that really terrible old woman; the irritating thing was that Muriel accepted her without comment, exactly as she accepted the rest of us—as if, I thought with annoyance, we were all freaks together! "Mazie's grandmother is not—well—er—she's not at all—you know?" I said, feeling, notwithstanding this public-spirited effort, a little embarrassed under Muriel's direct, serious gaze. "Mrs. Botlisch is—well, she's really not—er—very good style, nobody else here is like her—you must have noticed it. She's awfully common—of course, we didn't know much about the Pallinders before they came here—nobody knows how they—they got in, you see——"

"I shouldn't think you'd come to the house so much if you feel that way," said Muriel. "I wouldn't."

She did not mean it as a rebuke; she was only saying, as usual, precisely what she thought. But all at once, with the uncompromising harshness of youth, I saw and denounced myself inwardly for a petty groundling, eating people's bread with a covert sneer, and parading their shortcomings before a stranger. No, Muriel would not have done it. Noblesse oblige!

The Pallinders, to their honour be it said, never seemed to be ashamed of Mrs. Botlisch. They had their notions of noblesse oblige, too, strange as that may sound. Reflecting upon it now, I see certain a heroism in the respect they paid that dreadful, screeching, vile-tongued old termagant. I have known prosperous, reputable families, who paid the butcher and thought it a sin to play cards, wherein the unornamental older members were not treated with one-half the consideration these kind-hearted, conscienceless outlaws bestowed on Mrs. Botlisch. She was a fat harridan of seventy with a blotched red face, a great, coarse, husky voice like a man's and thick hands, the nails bitten down to the quick. She liked to go about without corsets or shoes in a shapeless gaberdine she called a double-gown—not too clean at that. She kept a bottle of whisky on her mantelpiece; she had a disconcerting habit of whisking out her teeth and laying them down wherever she chanced to be; you might come upon them grinning amongst Mazie's music on the piano, or under the sofa-cushions. She frankly enjoyed a loose story, and made a point of telling them in mixed companies of young people. She alternately bullied the servants and gossiped with them in the kitchen; once I most inopportunely happened upon Mrs. Botlisch engaged in a battle-royal with one of the chambermaids over some trifle—a broken dish, perhaps—in the pantry. Fortunately, I could not understand one word they uttered; and after a little, Mrs. Pallinder came, looking quite grey over her handsome resolute face, and took her mother away still shrieking hideous abuse. "Ma is so eccentric," she said to me afterwards, with a ghastly smile; and some feeling, of mingled horror and compassion, withheld me from reporting the wretched scene. In most households, these undesirable parents can be thrust, gently or not, into the background; in fact, very many parents retire thither of their own accord. But Mrs. Botlisch was not of that type.

"I like to set in the parlour an' see the young folks," she said. "Mirandy she don't want me to, but I says to her, 'Mirandy,' says I, 'don't you worry. I'm goin' ter keep my uppers an' lowers in, 'less I git a fish-bone er a hunk o' meat under the plate at dinner, an' I ain't a-goin' to no bed till I git sleepy,' says I. She says, 'Ma, I'm afraid you won't be comf'ble with your—you know—on all evenin'.'" (Here she gave J. B. a poke in the side and dropped her left eyelid). "'Lord love you, don't set there lookin' so innercent like you'd never saw a woman undress in yer life—don't come that over me, young feller. She says, 'Ma, I'm afraid you'll feel kinder tight an' uncomf'ble with 'em on all evenin' 'long as you ain't used to wearin' 'em much in the daytime,' she says. 'Land!' says I. 'Mirandy,' I ain't squoze inter my cloze by main stren'th the way Mazie is. 'F I feel uncomf'ble, I'll just undo the bottom buttons of my basque an' I'll be all right, you see.'"

And there she sat, true to her word, creaking in her black silk and bugles (with the bottom buttons undone!), perspiring greasily over her fat red face; and shouting rough, humorous, and frequently shrewd criticism at our amateurs during rehearsal until midnight, when we went out to the dining-room for oysters, egg-nogg, and the too lavish entertainment of Colonel Pallinder's sideboard. The first time this occurred Teddy Johns retreated precipitately from the table, and, being sought, was discovered at last, pallidly reclining on the library lounge.

"I'm all right, old man," he said feebly. "Just a minute, please. I couldn't stand seeing old Mrs. Botlisch wallop down those oysters, that's all."

There lies before me now a square of rough paper (designedly rough), with jagged edges (designedly jagged), tinted in water colours an elegant cloudy blue, with a butterfly, or some such insect, painted in one corner, and a slit diagonally opposite through which we stuck a single rosebud, as I remember. Slanting across the sheet in loose gilt lettering I read "Programme," and a date beneath. This confection represented days of effort and ingenuity on the part of those young ladies among my contemporaries who painted china, or were otherwise "artistic." Some of them took the "Art Amateur," at a ruinous expenditure; that publication has long since gone the way of all flesh and most print, in company, it would appear, with the amateurs for whom it was destined. Nobody is either "artistic" or amateurish any more. We did the jagging with a meat-saw, I believe—what a spectacle for our accomplished posterity!

If I reverse the sheet, I find upon the other side, in a correct angular hand (it may well be my own, for angularity was much the fashion in those days; and the inartistic ones let what aid they could to the task of programme-making), I find, I say, the

The uninformed might very well inquire, as did Doctor Vardaman, what under Heaven Arnold von Winkelreid was doing in this galÈre? He appeared among the other historical personages with a baseball-catcher's padded guard tied about his chest, and stuck full of enormous arrows; at one time or another every young man in the cast, including Jimmie Hathaway himself, was overheard laboriously explaining to Muriel that it was "all just nonsense, you know; of course Winkelreid didn't have anything to do with Tell—but there was an Arnold in the cast of the real opera—and then there was that funny old piece about Arnold von Winkelreid in McGuffey's Reader, you know: 'Make way for liberty, he cried, make way for liberty, and died!' and he somehow seemed to fit in pretty well with the rest of the foolishness. They had thought of having Casabianca, too, but gave it up," and so on and so on.

"Don't pay any attention to their excuses, Miss Baxter," said the doctor fiercely, yet shaking with laughter. "It's all miserable horse-play—vandalism—desecration. 'Guillaume Tell' is a beautiful opera, the creation of a great musical genius. I've seen Sonntag and Lablache in it; it ought to be sacred from these barbarians—you hear me, boys, barbarians!" He menaced them with a closed fist; and they went on shamelessly:

Gessler (in a loud voice)—Who are these fellows?

Rudolph—My lord, these are Swiss.

Gessler (louder, pointing to Tell)—Who's that fellow with the freckles?

Rudolph—My lord, that is a dotted Swiss.

Gessler (louder still)—Take away that dashed Swiss!

Rudolph—My lord, I said dotted.

Gessler (very loud)—Well, I said dashed——

It took little enough to make us laugh, for we thought all that very funny indeed. And an interesting point might be made of the fact that "William Tell," whether the men had greater abilities, or easier parts, or from whatever reason, was, as a whole, far and away superior to the play in which the girls appeared. Doctor Vardaman, for all his old-time gallantry, betrayed his preference more than once; but it sometimes seemed to me as if the old gentleman took a malign satisfaction in viewing our performances, theatrical and otherwise, as one who should stand by and observe the antics of so many apes with an amused detachment.

"Of course, of course, I enjoy the comedy. Don't you want me to enjoy the comedy?" he said when I taxed him, and eyed me sidelong with his discomfiting grin. The doctor was a queer old man; not the least evidence of his queerness was the interest he displayed in our affairs. He watched us drill for "William Tell" and "Mrs. Tankerville's Tiara," day by day, appearing to find therein unfailing entertainment. To be sure he had little else to do; he had long retired from practice, and, as he said of himself, was the weak-minded victim of his own whims. With all his oddities, we were fond of him; and his advice and suggestions were a real help to such of us as took ourselves and our parts seriously. The stage was one of his many hobbies; he had collected a huge library of books relating to it; had seen all of the celebrated actors of his day and known not a few of them; and could recall Laura Keane in the very rÔle which Muriel was now essaying.

"Do you remember what she wore, Doctor?" Mazie asked him, characteristically enough, by the way.

"White gauze, I think," said the old gentleman, considering. "Yes, it was white gauze, and a touch of green about it somewhere."

"Huh! Touch o' green was a fig-leaf, I s'pose—hope so, anyhow!" said Mrs. Botlisch, and "wallopped" down another oyster. She was a terrible old woman.

"I don't know what we'd do without you, doctor," said Mazie precipitately. "You know so much about it—what we ought to do, I mean, and how the whole thing ought to go. It's ever so kind of you——"

"Not at all—the kindness is on your side," said the doctor. He glanced about with a smile in which there lurked a whimsical melancholy. "I don't aspire to the post of guide, philosopher, and fr——"

"Talkin' o' guides," old Mrs. Botlisch interrupted him. "Ever hear that story 'bout the English feller that went aroun' Niagry Falls with a guide, out to Table Rock an' Goat Island, and down under th' Falls an' everywheres, an' when they got through, he took an' wrote in th' visitors' book, 'Why am I like Desdemona?' That's th' white girl that married a nigger in one o' these here plays, you know. He took an' wrote, 'Why am I like Desdemona? Becuz——'"

"Ahem!" interrupted Doctor Vardaman, with extraordinary vehemence. "You were asking me for the address of the man that sells make-up boxes, one of you the other day. I meant to bring it with me to-night, but forgot. Any time you want, you can stop at my house, and in case I'm out, ask Huddesley, I left it with him. It's Kryzowski—bowski—wowski—some such unpronounceable Russian name, and his shop is somewhere on Sixth Avenue, I think, but I can't exactly remember."

All of which speech the doctor delivered in a rapid and vigorous outburst of words, not pausing until he was quite out of breath; and even then he had the air of one skirting by a hair's-breadth some desperate verge.

"I'll stop in to-morrow," said J. B. "Huddesley isn't likely to get mixed up about it, is he?"

"Huddesley? Oh, no, trust him. Besides I'll leave it written down. But Huddesley is perfectly reliable—a remarkable man, that—never had a such a servant is my house—he's really unusual."

"Snake in th' grass—don't tell me!" Mrs. Botlisch grunted. She had taken a bitter prejudice against the doctor's man-servant; partly, no doubt, because although he was a good deal about the house, coming and going on the doctor's errands, he had managed to avoid both her bullying and her patronage. There is nothing more offensive than the servant whose manners are better than our own. And Huddesley's manners were perfect in his degree; he was English, we supposed from the short fragment of his history we had heard, and had not been long enough abroad to lose the insular standard of domestic service, and the insular traditions of class.

"Huddesley'll get spoiled if you don't look out, Doctor," Colonel Pallinder warned him. "None of my affair, of course, but, pardon me, too much notice and perhaps too much pay——"

"I know some of 'em that ain't sufferin' from that anyhow!" growled the old woman pointedly.

"I believe ma thinks we ought to give all these lazy darkies as much as we spend on ourselves," said Mrs. Pallinder with an indulgent laugh. "As if they weren't eating us out of house and home already! But William's right, doctor, Huddesley will be spoiled if we're not all more careful. A white servant can't stand petting and familiarity the way black ones do; sooner or later he'll presume on it. Did you know that all these boys have been going down to your house to get Huddesley to hear them their parts?"

"It's my fault, I began it," J. B. explained, reddening. "I said to Ted that if he wanted to know how an English butler behaved he'd better get a few pointers from Huddesley. Huddesley'd make an ideal 'Jenks,' you know, as far as looks go, I mean. He's the real thing in butlers. And it's funny, he's got ever so many good ideas about business, you know, and all that. But we won't do it any more if you'd rather not, Doctor."

"Pooh, you can't spoil a man like that," the doctor said. "Reverence for class is born in 'em; it runs in the blood. That's what I admire about these English servants—their perfect self-respect, and idea of the dignity of their own position, without presuming on yours."

"It's awfully convenient having him to prompt anyhow," said Mazie, who needed a great deal of prompting. "Nobody wants to sit and hold an old prompt-book and watch for mistakes. What bothers me is all those funny little pairs of letters 'r.u.' and 'cross over' and 'sits right' scattered all through your speech like hiccups. I don't know what r.u. means, anyhow."

"Huddesley says it means retire up—walk toward the back of the stage, you know."

"Well, but I thought you oughtn't ever to turn your back on the audience."

"Depends on yer figger, I guess," said Mrs. Botlisch. "Some girl's backs and fronts ain't no different—they're flat both sides like a paper doll!"

"Huddesley has aspirations," said Doctor Vardaman briskly. "I discovered that some time ago. At first I thought he wanted to study medicine; he used to be forever poking about my little room, pretending to dust and arrange the bottles, and asking all manner of questions. But since this business of your plays has come up, he's been tremendously interested in them. The fellow has some education, you know. I've found him two or three times reading in my library, with the feather duster under his arm—perfectly absorbed. He was very mortified the first time I caught him at it, and humbly begged my pardon. 'Hi can't resist a book, sir, sometimes,' he said. 'Hi wouldn't wish to be thought to presoom, but Hi've tastes hother than my lot can gratify; and Hi've 'ad 'opes—but,' says he, with a sigh, 'that's hall hover and gone, now.'"

"Kind of stagey, wasn't he?"

"Yes, of course, he must have got that out of some book. Once in a while, he uses very fine language, indeed, and then I know he's been reading. I said, 'Well, Huddesley, it's a pity, if feeling that way, you can't raise yourself as high as you choose here in America.' I only said it to draw him out, you know. He shook his head mournfully. 'No, sir,' says he, 'Hi won't never be anything but a butler—a servant pourin' out wine an' blackin' boots for the rich and light-'earted like yourself, sir.' I asked him what he would like to be if he could begin over again. 'A hactor, sir,' said he respectfully. 'Hi feel the stirrin' of Hart within my buzzom.' 'That's where we commonly feel 'em, Huddesley,' says I. 'Hi don't mean 'eart, sir, beggin' your parding, Hi mean Hart—with a Hay, sir—that's what Hi feel, but they'll never 'ave no houtlet, sir, Hi'm a butler—the die is cast——' and then I escaped into the garden to laugh."

"That isn't all funny—it's pathetic too," said J. B. thoughtfully. "Poor devil!"

At least two people in the room looked at the young man with a quicker interest—Doctor Vardaman and Muriel, the doctor with an odd and pleased surprise in his keen quizzical face. As for Muriel, she and J. B. looked at one another pretty often, as I remember. Mrs. Botlisch raised her hard old features from a close inspection of her empty, swept and scraped platter, and fixed the doctor with a little twinkling porcine eye.

"How long you had him anyway, Doc.?"

"Three months, or so, I believe."

"Oh, no, it's not that long, Doctor," exclaimed Mazie. "I remember Huddesley came after the holidays, just as I was starting to Washington. That was a little after the Charity Ball. I put off going so as not to miss it. I remember about Huddesley because you had just got rid of that awful man that had d.t's and came up here with an axe wanting to kill somebody."

"Huddesley's arrival raised the tone of our neighbourhood appreciably," said the doctor, with a laugh. Doctor Vardaman's men were a byword in the community. Men of every colour and nationality had drifted through his hands; it was a long procession of lazy, drunken, thieving rascality, or honesty so abysmally stupid and incompetent as to be equally worthless. "I'll never let him go, now I've got him," said the old gentleman. "I have a fellow-feeling for all you ladies that keep house. Rather than lose him, I'd give him everything I own even unto the half of my substance."

"He'll git more'n that 'fore he's through with ye," said Mrs. Botlisch. "You young Taylor feller,"—she always called J. B. and in fact all the young men that frequented the house, by the last name—"you'd better git that bottle o' rye away from Johns. He's had about enough, 'f I'm any jedge—an' I reckon I'd oughter be, all th' drunks I've handled——"

"Pioneer times, pioneer times," said the colonel, hastily. "Er—um—the ice to Mr. Johns, Sam."

"When Mirandy's pa useter came home loaded," pursued the old woman, unmoved, "many's the time I've shet him in th' woodshed, him hollerin' bloody murder—'Let him holler!' says I. Time mornin' come I'd git him under th' pump—oh my, yes, I've had lots of experience."

"Pioneer times," said Colonel Pallinder again desperately. (But J. B. did take the bottle away from Teddy's neighbourhood.) "Pioneer days! Good God, gentlemen, when I think of what men and women had to contend with then, I'm ashamed, yes, ashamed of the luxuries we live in. You were saying, Doctor——"

"About—ahem—oh—ah—yes, about Huddesley," said the doctor, who had not been saying anything. "I can't always make the fellow out—I'm rather puzzled——"

"Speakin' o' puzzles," said old Mrs. Botlisch, "I was goin' to tell ye that one 'bout th' English feller that the guide was takin' 'roun' Niagry Falls. After they had gone down under th' Falls, an' out to Goat Island, and everywheres else, ye know, he took an' wrote in th' visitors' book, 'Why am I like Desdemona?' (That's the white girl that goes off with a nigger in th' play, ye know). He wrote just that: 'Why am I like Desdemona?' Th' answer is: 'Becuz——'"

This time, in spite of an outburst of coughing that threatened serious results to Doctor Vardaman, in spite of a fusillade of loud irrelevant talk from the colonel, in spite even of Teddy Johns' quite unintentionally falling over a chair, this time, I say, we all heard the answer!