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"You you mean he " Bibbs stammered, having begun to speak too quickly. Checking himself, he drew a long breath, then asked, quietly, "Does father expect me to come down-stairs this evening?" "Well, I think he does," she answered. "You see, it's the 'house-warming, as he calls it, and he said he thinks all our chuldern ought to be around us, as well as the old friends and other folks.
Cards for the house-warming had been out for two weeks, and the event was near. She was in her own apartments this pale, wintry afternoon, putting the finishing touches to her toilet. Nothing seemed to suit. The maid found her in a very bad humor. "Remember," she had said to her husband, when he ordered his brougham after breakfast, "sharp seven, we are to dine alone the first time."
He had congratulated himself upon the selection of the site, and upon the suitableness of the premises to the requirements of a good trade; and his heart swelled within him, as he sat at the head of his own table, on the occasion of the house-warming, dispensing with no niggard hand the gratuitous viands and unlimited beer, which were at once to symbolise and inaugurate the hospitality of his mansion.
Grew was surprised by a telegram from his son. "Want to see you important matter. Expect me to-morrow afternoon." Mr. Grew received the telegram after breakfast. To peruse it he had lifted his eye from a paragraph of the morning paper describing a fancy-dress dinner which had taken place the night before at the Hamilton Gliddens' for the house-warming of their new Fifth Avenue palace.
The poor Baron, pointed at, laughed at, and fuming with rage, as may easily be imagined, took it into his head that on the occasion of giving the house-warming he would at the same time get rid of his paternal disguise, and get the price of so much generosity. Always circumvented by "La Torpille," he determined to treat of their union by correspondence, so as to win from her an autograph promise.
Esther was resolved to make the poor millionaire pay dearly for what he called his day of triumph. And at the beginning of February 1830 the house-warming party had not yet been given in the "little palace." "Well," said Esther in confidence to her friends, who repeated it to the Baron, "I shall open house at the Carnival, and I mean to make my man as happy as a cock in plaster."
He went down into the "wood-lot" their own "wood-lot" and cut a spruce tree, and set it up in the dining-room; they hung thereon all the contrivances which the associated grandparents had sent down to commemorate an occasion which was not only Christmas and house-warming, but the baby's third birthday as well.
Now at last the house was ready, four servants were engaged, and the ceremony of hanging the crémaillère was being duly accomplished. The Heaths' house-warming had brought together Charmian's friends. Heath, true to his secret determination to break away from his old life, had wished that it should be so.
'Oh! they would come fast enough, said Steerforth; 'but we should inconvenience you. You had better come and dine with us somewhere. I would not by any means consent to this, for it occurred to me that I really ought to have a little house-warming, and that there never could be a better opportunity.
"It bothers," said Jim; "and if it weren't for that, I'd feel conscience-stricken at doing anything to rob the idiot of a most delicious grief." The coolness of early autumn was in the air the night of Jim's house-warming.
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