Harold and Richard St. Claire, or Dick, as he was familiarly called, were great friends, and if the latter knew there was a difference between himself and the child of poverty he never manifested it, and played far oftener with Harold than with Tom, whose domineering disposition and rough manners were distasteful to him.  That Harold would one day be obliged to earn his living, Mrs. Crawford knew, but he was still too young for anything of that kind; and when Grace Atherton, or Mrs. St. Claire offered him money for the errands he sometimes did for them, she steadily refused to let him take it.  Had she known of Mrs. Tracy’s proposition that he should be present at the party as hall-boy, she would have declined, for though she could go there herself as an employee, she shrank from suffering Harold to do so.  That Mrs. Tracy was not a lady, she knew, and in her heart there was always a feeling of superiority to the woman even while she served her, and she was not as sorry, perhaps, as she ought to have been, for the attack of rheumatism which would prevent her from going to the park to take charge of the kitchen during the evening.

‘I am sorry to disappoint her, but I am glad not to be there,’ she was thinking to herself as she sat in her bright, cheerful kitchen, waiting for Harold, when he burst in upon her, exclaiming: 

’Oh, grandma, only think!  I am invited to the party, and I told her I’d go, and I am to be there at half-past seven sharp, and to wear my meetin’ clothes.’

’Invited to the party!  What do you mean?  Only grown up people are to be there,’ Mrs. Crawford said.

‘Yes, I know;’ replied Harold, ’but I’m not to be with the grown-ups.  I’m to stay in the upper hall and tell ’em where to go.’

‘Oh, you are to be a waiter,’ was Mrs. Crawford’s rather contemptuous remark, which Harold did not heed in his excitement.

’Yes, I’m to be at the head of the stairs, and somebody else at the bottom; and they are to have fiddlin and dancin’; I’ve never seen anybody dance; and ice-cream and cake, with something like plaster all over it, and oranges and grapes, and, oh, everything!  Dick St. Claire told me; he knows; his mother has had parties, and she’s going to-night, and her gown is crimson velvet, with black and white fur in it like our cat, only they don’t call it that; and—­oh, I forgot—­they have had a telegraph, and I took it to Mrs. Tracy, who looked mad and almost cried when she read it, Mr. Arthur Tracy is coming home to-night.’

Harold had talked so fast that his grandmother could hardly follow him, but she understood what he said last, and started as if he had struck her a blow.

‘Arthur Tracy!  Coming home to-night!’ she exclaimed.  ’Oh, I am so glad, so glad.’

’But Mrs. Tracy did not seem to be, and I guess she wanted to stop the party,’ Harold said, repeating as nearly as he could what had passed between him and the lady.