Many, who for months had absented themselves from the society, came this afternoon with the expectation of gaining a look at the costly marble and rosewood furniture with which Mrs. Campbell’s parlors were said to be adorned.  But they were disappointed, for Mrs. Campbell had no idea of turning a sewing society into her richly furnished drawing-rooms.  The spacious sitting-room, the music-room adjoining, and the wide cool hall beyond, were thrown open to all, and by three o’clock they were nearly filled.

At first there was almost perfect silence, broken only by a whisper or under tone, but gradually the restraint wore way, and the woman near the door, who had come “because she was a mind to, but didn’t expect to be noticed any way,” and who, every time she was addressed, gave a nervous hitch backward with her chair, had finally hitched herself into the hall, where with unbending back and pursed up lips she sat, highly indignant at the ill-concealed mirth of the young girls, who on the stairs were watching her retrograde movements.  The hum of voices increased, until at last there was a great deal more talking than working.  The Unitarian minister’s bride, Lilly Martin’s stepmother, the new clerk at Drury’s, Dr. Lay’s wife’s new hat and its probable cost, and the city boarders at the hotel, were all duly discussed, and then for a time there was again silence while Mrs. Johnson, president of the society, told of the extreme destitution in which she had that morning found a poor English family, who had moved into the village two or three years before.

They had managed to earn a comfortable living until the husband and father suddenly died, since which time the wife’s health had been very rapidly failing, until now she was no longer able to work, but was wholly dependent for subsistence upon the exertions of her oldest child Frank, and the charity of the villagers, who sometimes supplied her with far more than was necessary, and again thoughtlessly neglected her for many days.  Her chief dependence, too, had now failed her, for the day before the sewing society, Frank had been taken seriously ill with what threatened to be scarlet fever.

“Dear me,” said the elegant Mrs. Campbell, smoothing the folds of her rich India muslin—­“dear me, I did not know that we had such poverty among us.  What will they do?”

“They’ll have to go to the poor-house, won’t they?”

“To the poor-house!” repeated Mrs. Lincoln, who spent her winters in Boston, and whose summer residence was in the neighborhood of the pauper’s home, “pray don’t send any more low, vicious children to the poor-house.  My Jenny has a perfect passion for them, and it is with difficulty I can keep her away.”

“They are English, I believe,” continued Mrs. Campbell.  “I do wonder why so many of those horridly miserable creatures will come to this country.”

“Forgets, mebby, that she’s English,” muttered the woman at the door; and Mrs. Johnson added, “It would draw tears from your eyes, to see that little pale-faced Mary trying to wait upon her mother and brother, and carrying that sickly baby in her arms so that it may not disturb them.”