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"Better late than never!" said the Colonel; "let me heft them spoons." Mrs. Sprowle came down into her chair again as if all her bones had been bewitched out of her. "I'm pretty nigh beat out a'ready," said she, "before any of the folks has come." They sat silent awhile, waiting for the first arrival. How nervous they got! and how their senses were sharpened!
In the remoter apartments every imaginable operation was going on at once, roasting, boiling, baking, beating, rolling, pounding in mortars, frying, freezing; for there was to be ice-cream to-night of domestic manufacture; and in the midst of all these labors, Mrs. Sprowle and Miss Matilda were moving about, directing and helping as they best might, all day long.
Sprowle in to supper?" And the Colonel returned the compliment by offering his arm to Mrs. Judge Thornton. The door of the supper-room was now open, and the company, following the lead of the host and hostess, began to stream into it, until it was pretty well filled. There was an awful kind of pause.
That which you had done me the honor of writing before, has not yet been received. It having gone by Dr. Witherspoon to America, which I had left before his return to it, the delay is easily accounted for. I wish you may be rightly informed that the property of Mr. Sprowle is yet unsold. It was advertised so long ago, as to found a presumption that the sale has taken place.
When Silas Peckham saw how many delicacies had survived the evening's conflict, his commercial spirit rose at once to the point of a proposal. "Colonel Sprowle," said he, "there's meat and cakes and pies and pickles enough on that table to spread a hahnsome colation. If you'd like to trade reasonable, I think perhaps I should be willin' to take 'em off your hands.
"Where's all the oranges gone to?" said Mrs. Sprowle. "I expected there'd be ever so many of 'em left. I didn't see many of the folks eatin' oranges. Where's the skins of 'em? There ought to be six dozen orange-skins round on the plates, and there a'n't one dozen. And all the small cakes, too, and all the sugar things that was stuck on the big cakes. Has anybody counted the spoons?
All of them had made it a point to come; and as each of them entered, it seemed to Colonel and Mrs. Sprowle that the lamps burned up with a more cheerful light, and that the fiddles which sounded from the uncarpeted room were all half a tone higher and half a beat quicker. Mr. Bernard came in later than any of them; he had been busy with his new duties.
Deacon Soper came up presently and entered into conversation with Colonel Sprowle. "I hope to see our pastor present this evenin'," said the Deacon. "I don't feel quite sure," the Colonel answered. "His dyspepsy has been bad on him lately.
What y' been dreamin' abaout? Y' giv a jump like a hopper-grass. Wake up, wake UP! Th' party 's over, and y' been asleep all the mornin'. The party's over, I tell ye! Wake up!" "Over!" said Mrs. Sprowle, who began to define her position at last, "over! I should think 't was time 't was over! It's lasted a hundud year.
Miss Matilda Sprowle, sole daughter of the house, had reached the age at which young ladies are supposed in technical language to have come out, and thereafter are considered to be in company. "There's one piece o' goods," said the Colonel to his wife, "that we ha'n't disposed of, nor got a customer for yet. That 's Matildy. I don't mean to set HER up at vaandoo.
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