"Cousin Phmie! The idea!" Cecilia muttered to herself, as she tried the ring, first on one finger, then on another. "Of course she don't want it--old as the hills!"

I did not say one word while that creature carried off the first Christmas present I ever had in my life; but it seemed as if I should choke. Isn't it hard that a spoiled child like that should have the power to destroy the happiness of three grown people? But she did it.

The Christmas dinner was enough to make your mouths water, from this distance--the n.o.blest sort of a turkey, stuffed with oysters, and everything to match--but none of us had much appet.i.te for it. You can judge what my feelings amounted to, when I have lived one whole month in a boarding-house and couldn't get up an appet.i.te--no, not even for the whitest meat of the breast! Old as the hills, indeed!

XX.

ABOUT LIONS.

Dear sisters:--Cousin E. E. had invited a lot of her friends to a stupendous dinner-party on Christmas Day, and she wanted me there for a lion, she said, though what on earth a great roaring lion had to do at a dinner-table I couldn't begin to think. The idea made me fidgety; but I didn't think it consistent with the dignity of our Society to ask questions, or let any one know that I didn't understand everything just as well as folks that have lived in York all their lives. Still I couldn't help trying to circ.u.mvent Cousin E. E. into telling me what I wanted to know in a way that some people might call femininely surrept.i.tious.

"A lion!" says I. "Are such animals invited to a city dinner as a general thing?"

"Oh! not at all," says she; "the most difficult thing in the world to get hold of is a real, genuine lion; that is, one the whole world knows about, and wants to see."

"Why," says I, "if folks are so anxious about it, why don't they go up to the Rink and see Mr. Barnum's great monster animal. It don't cost much; besides, there are camels and monkeys, and lots and lots of things, thrown in."

Cousin Emily Elizabeth laughed till tears come into her eyes.

"Oh! Cousin Phmie," says she, "you are so delightfully satirical."

"Do you think so?" says I, awfully puzzled.

"Yes," says she, "I do; but to me the eccentricities of genius are always interesting. To be an attractive lion one must say bright things, no matter how hard they cut."

"I wasn't aware," says I, "that lions were given to much talking."

"Oh!" says she, "that depends. There is your talkative lion, your learned lion, your silent lion--"

"That is the sort that I've always seen," says I; "now and then a growl, but nothing beyond that."

Cousin E. E. began to laugh again, till she had to hold one hand to her side.

"Oh! cousin, paws, paws," says she; "you just kill me with laughing."

"Yes," says I, "I don't deny that lions have paws, but it was speech we were talking about, and that I do deny."

Cousin E. E. just shrieked out laughing, though for the life of me I couldn't tell what it was all about.

"Now, don't you understand me--honest now--don't you?" says she.

"Why, of course I do; only nothing could be more ridiculous than the idea of a great, big, magnificent wild beast, with a swinging walk, and a tuft on the end of his tail, being showed off at a dinner-table. I for one shouldn't have a mite of appet.i.te with such a creature prowling round."

"My dear, dear cousin, I'm speaking of human lions."

"Human lions! I always thought the creatures were awfully inhuman," says I; "nothing but a jackal can be worse."

"I mean great people--celebrated for something--bravery, literature, the arts, sciences," says she.

"Well, what of them?" says I.

"In society we sometimes call them lions."

"O--oh!" says I, drawing the word out to give myself time. "So you really thought I didn't understand. Why, of course. Dear me! cousin, how easy it is to cheat you!"

"Oh!" says she, "one must get up early to match you women of genius, I'm aware of that. What dry humor you have, now, looking so innocent and earnest, too!"

I smiled benignly upon Cousin E. E.; if she could find any humor in what we'd been a-talking about, it was more than I could. Lions! Where does the joke come in, when human beings are called such names as that? Wild beasts, indeed!

"How really modest you are!" says Cousin E. E. "Anybody else, who could write as you do, would have known that she was meant when I mentioned lions."

I dropped my eyes, and folded both hands.

"It will be the great feature of our party," says she. "Our friends will know that you are a blood relation, and that pleases Dempster; besides, you converse so beautifully, too."

"Do I?" says I, folding one hand over the other, and back again.

"And look so--so distinguished."

I drew my figure upright, and looked into the gla.s.s opposite. My cousin had chosen her words well; there was something imposing in the bend of that head. I say nothing; but she was right. Indeed, so far as I am concerned, she generally is.

Early in the morning I sent down for my pink silk dress. Cousin E. E.

looked as if she was going to say something against it, at first; but, after a little, her face cleared up, and I heard her muttering:

"This is the third time. Nothing on earth but a woman of genius could stand that; but she has got enough to carry it off."

I said nothing, but thought of that bill, and just made a calculation of how much it would cost a woman to rig herself out if she went to many parties, and only wore a dress that cost five hundred dollars once.

Well, sisters, Christmas Day came, and we were up by daylight, for Cousin Emily Elizabeth is, as I have told you, a High Church woman and an Episcopalian. We haven't got any meeting-house of that denomination in our neighborhood, and I don't exactly know what high and low church means, without it is that one set hold to meeting-houses with a belfry, and the others stand up for a high steeple--a thing that I told Cousin E. E. we common people didn't aspire to; at which she laughed again, as if I had said something awfully witty.

Well, in another report I have given you an account of this daybreak meeting in the High Church, but just now I am taken up with the Christmas dinner.

Now don't calculate, because we eat dinner punctually at noon in Vermont, that people here do the same thing, because it is nothing of the sort. Poor working people do that in this city, and n.o.body else. The more genteel and the richer you are, the later you eat your meals. Most of the well-to-do merchants eat dinner at six. Men that have got above earning their own living dine later yet, and some have got so disgustingly genteel and rich, that I don't suppose they dine till next day.

Cousin Dempster attends to business yet, so he settled down on eight o'clock for his dinner, and a splendid affair it was.

When Cousin E. E. and I came rustling downstairs with a cataract of silk rolling after us, I just screamed right out. The sight of that table was so exhilarating, gla.s.s a-shining--silver dishes and things a-sparkling--flowers heaped up in flower-pots and twisted in wreaths around the gla.s.s globe overhead, which flashed, and sparkled, and glittered as if it had been frozen up with ten thousand icicles that flung back all the light without melting a drop. The silk curtains were all let down. The carpet looked like a flower-bed, and the whole room was a sight to behold.

Cousin E. E. shut the gla.s.s doors that looked as if a sharp frost had crept over 'em, and we sat down on the round sofa in the front room, ready for company, with nothing but those two marble folks to hear what we said.

But peace and quietness will never come to a house that has a fast child like Miss Dempster, as the creature calls herself, in it. We had hardly sat down and got our trains spread, when in she came, all in a fluff of white muslin, and a flutteration of red ribbons, with her hair a flowing down her back, crinkle, crinkle, and her--well--limbs just strained into silk stockings and kid boots laced down ever so far below her frock, and looking so impudent. Down she sat on the round sofa, and begun to swing her heels against the silk cushions.

"Why, daughter," says Cousin E. E., "what is the meaning of this?"