CHAPTER XXI.

THE WIDOW BOWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY.

There was a good deal of interest felt, as has been said, in the lonely condition of Dudley Venner in that fine mansion-house of his, and with that strange daughter, who would never be married, as many people thought, in spite of all the stories.  The feelings expressed by the good folks who dated from the time when they “buried aour little Anny Mari,” and others of that homespun stripe, were founded in reason, after all.  And so it was natural enough that they should be shared by various ladies, who, having conjugated the verb to live as far as the preterpluperfect tense, were ready to change one of its vowels and begin with it in the present indicative.  Unfortunately, there was very little chance of showing sympathy in its active form for a gentleman who kept himself so much out of the way as the master of the Dudley Mansion.

Various attempts had been made, from time to time, of late years, to get him out of his study, which had, for the moat part, proved failures.  It was a surprise, therefore, when he was seen at the Great Party at the Colonel’s.  But it was an encouragement to try him again, and the consequence had been that he had received a number of notes inviting him to various smaller entertainments, which, as neither he nor Elsie had any fancy for them, he had politely declined.

Such was the state of things when he received an invitation to take tea sociably, with a few friends, at Hyacinth Cottage, the residence of the Widow Rowens, relict of the late Beeri Rowens, Esquire, better known as Major Rowens.  Major Rowens was at the time of his decease a promising officer in the militia, in the direct line of promotion, as his waistband was getting tighter every year; and, as all the world knows, the militia-officer who splits off most buttons and fills the largest sword-belt stands the best chance of rising, or, perhaps we might say, spreading, to be General.

Major Rowens united in his person certain other traits that help a man to eminence in the arm of the service referred to.  He ran to high colors, to wide whisker, to open pores; he had the saddle-leather skin common in Englishmen, rarer in Americans,—­never found in the Brahmin caste, oftener in the military and the commodores:  observing people know what is meant; blow the seed-arrows from the white-kid-looking button which holds them on a dandelion-stalk, and the pricked-pincushion surface shows you what to look for.  He had the loud, gruff voice which implies the right to command.  He had the thick hand, stubbed fingers, with bristled pads between their joints, square, broad thumb-nails, and sturdy limbs, which mark a constitution made to use in rough out-door work.  He had the never-failing predilection for showy switch-tailed horses that step high, and sidle about, and act as if they were going to do something