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Updated: May 19, 2025
Just as the company were all standing for each guest had resigned a chair, which was placed by the table the needle-merchant and his wife made their advent, arm in arm, all pompous with a sense of personal importance, and looking stiffly condescending as they bowed to the old gentleman and the widow.
Just in the height of the dance, when the needle-merchant was all in a glow, balancing to every lady, and getting up a sort of extemporaneous affair, made from old remembrances of "The Cheat" and "The Virginia Reel," the whole company stopped short, and he exclaimed "Bless my soul!" And drawing forth a red silk handkerchief, he made a motion, as if his forehead wanted dusting.
While the worthy needle-merchant and his wife were sitting at the table the outer door opened, and a light, quick footstep sounded along the hall and ascended the stairs, seemingly two steps at a time. There was something so buoyant and cheerful in this springing footstep, that it quite aroused the needle-merchant, who got up and opening the door carefully, peeped into the hall.
She seemed to grow more beautiful every moment; the needle-merchant told her so. Chester only laughed, and his own wife did not frown, but glanced complacently down to her cameo breast-pin, feeling confident that there she could defy competition. The supper was over, the table cleared away, and around the bright stove they all gathered in a circle, chatting, laughing and telling stories.
When aristocracy is a matter of opinion, not of power, every man of course feels compelled to guard his claim to position with peculiar watchfulness; so with a benign conviction that he and his taller half had made a laudable sacrifice for the good of society, the little needle-merchant and his wife sat down together over a weak cup of tea, feeling rather miserable and disconsolate.
Before the little needle-merchant knew it, he found himself quite interested in the old man at his elbow, for after the ladies, Chester had helped the artist first, and on his plate was a choice morsel of the chicken's liver which made the little merchant's mouth water.
Dear to him, as the apple of his eye, was the pride of his station; but then the needle-merchant had members of the corporeal frame, petted and prompted till it was difficult to resist them. He loved his dignity much, but dignity was, after all, an abstraction, while in a good supper there was something substantial. He had returned home fully resolved not to accept Mrs.
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