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"Hush! she'll hear you." "No, she won't. There's Ellen beginning her piece. I know she's frightened by the way she plays. Hark! how she hurries the time!" "There, they are going to have refreshments, after all!" cried Esther Dearborn, as trays of lemonade and cake-baskets appeared below on their way to the parlor. "Isn't it a shame to have to stay up here?" "Professor Seccomb!
Two large cake-baskets turned on their ends, with two stout planks across them, served for a table, which was placed in front of a huge fragment of a buttress, beneath which irregular masses of fallen moss-covered stone made very fairly comfortable seats for some of the more special friends and supporters; while the audience generally were seated all up and down within hearing distance, forming a most picturesque congregation, as they sat, or stood, or lay down, as proved most convenient.
They were not at all surprised to see each other, however, for they had often already practised the same agreeable deception, themselves. The company once assembled, the little girl of twelve rolled up her sleeves, and took her station in the pantry, where she replenished the cake-baskets, the lemonade and sangaree-glasses handed about by her father, the coachman.
It was a very nice birthday supper, plates of warm biscuit, platters of cold chicken, dishes of beautiful honey, silver cake-baskets, filled with heavily-frosted cake. Tip, for one, had never seen such a sight in his life before, and he was so bewildered with the dazzle and glitter that he didn't know which way to turn. "Howard," said Mrs.
Tea-pots of mottled glaze, and cream-jugs with knobs of gilt, and square china ash-trays on which one instinctively expected to find the legend "Souvenir of Niagara Falls." Too many cake-baskets and too few sugar-bowls. Dark blue plates with warts on the edges and melancholy landscapes painted in the centers. Chintzes and wall-papers of patterns fashionable in 1890.
Then the gentlemen deposited their partners on chairs, and inquired, "May I bring you a little refreshment?" until the last drop of lemonade was drained, and only crumbs remained in the cake-baskets. They were all flushed and panting with the vigour with which they had joined in the dance, and at last Miss Phipps thought it wise to call a halt.
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