To be sure, we had coffee and bread and butter and cold ham for dinner that day; and we took our tea “standed round,” as Barbara said; and the dishes were put away in the covered sink; we knew where we could shirk righteously and in good order, when we could not accomplish everything; but there was neither huddle nor hurry; we were as quiet and comfortable as we could be.  Even Rosamond was satisfied with the very manner; to be composed is always to be elegant.  Anybody might have come in and lunched with us; anybody might have shared that easy, chatty cup of tea.

The front parlor did not amount to much, after all, pleasant and pretty as it was for the first receiving; we were all too eager for the real business of the evening.  It was bright and warm with the wood-fire and the lights; and the white curtains, nearly filling up three of its walls, made it very festal-looking.  There was the open piano, and Ruth played a little; there was the stereoscope, and some of the girls looked over the new views of Catskill and the Hudson that Dakie Thayne had given us; there was the table with cards, and we played one game of Old Maid, in which the Old Maid got lost mysteriously into the drawer, and everybody was married; and then Miss Pennington appeared at the door, with her man-servant behind her, and there was an end.  She took the big bowl, pinned over with a great damask napkin, out of the man’s hands, and went off privately with Barbara into the dining-room.

“This is the Snap,” she said, unfastening the cover, and producing from within a paper parcel.  “And that,” holding up a little white bottle, “is the Dragon.”  And Barbara set all away in the dresser until after supper.  Then we got together, without further ceremony, in the brown room.

We hung wedding-rings—­we had mother’s, and Miss Elizabeth had brought over Madam Pennington’s—­by hairs, and held them inside tumblers; and they vibrated with our quickening pulses, and swung and swung, until they rung out fairy chimes of destiny against the sides.  We floated needles in a great basin of water, and gave them names, and watched them turn and swim and draw together,—­some point to point, some heads and points, some joined cosily side to side, while some drifted to the margin and clung there all alone, and some got tears in their eyes, or an interfering jostle, and went down.  We melted lead and poured it into water; and it took strange shapes; of spears and masts and stars; and some all went to money; and one was a queer little bottle and pills, and one was pencils and artists’ tubes, and—­really—­a little palette with a hole in it.

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