MY CHAPERON.
"Elle avait dix ans—et moi trente."
WOMEN'S voices were speaking, and this conversation drifted through the window:
"I tell you he won't be here to supper: it's no kind of use your beating up that cake. Guess he'll go in the four-o'clock train. I've just told Jimmy to kind of stay round,—like as not some one would have to drive over to the station."
"Sudden, ain't it?" said a voice farther back.
"Should think he might have told: just like men-folks! And there's that family that would have come to-morrow, only he said he'd rather pay more and have the house quiet."
"Oh, he's only going for five days," said the first voice; "but I don't know as we'd better have him back. He's going to take care of a lot of trunks and folks,—women-folks,—and they've all got banjos—"
"Trunks, and women-folks, and banjos! Why, Georgiana Hexom!"
The cake-maker had evidently come into the front room and dropped on to the nearest chair, exhausted from horror and amazement.
"Yes, banjos; and banjos, as far as I know anything, has to do with minstrels. Looks well for respectable farmers like us to be boarding minstrels!"
"I don't believe it," said Mrs. Hexom feebly; "minstrels is black. Besides, father's sold his folks milk for years,—knows all about 'em—"
"Folks ain't always what they seem," said Georgiana, with the superior tone of a person who thinks she has the last word,—a word which the cleverest man or woman has yet to find.
"You can read it for yourself,—it's all up-stairs on a postal,—there's a postal and two letters,—Jimmy forgot 'em till this morning,—he brought 'em over Saturday night,—he had so much on his mind yesterday, what with rehearsing for the Sunday-school concert and driving Mary Ann's boarders over to the Episcopal meeting-house."
Two letters and a postal. I rose from my hammock and went up-stairs. The postal, written in a commercial hand, ran thus:
"Don't fail us at the steamer,—Monday night. Be there early,—say half-past nine. Twenty-five in party,—sixteen girls,—all the club,—and some friends. Want you to share responsibility of trunks and making things pleasant. Take banjos. Event of a lifetime. 'Ship am a-waitin' at the golden gate.' Jim."
A square envelope, directed in a woman's hand, the heavy paper giving a perfumed suggestion that the woman's hand might have held a bunch of violets behind the pen:
"Dear Mr. Harding,—We are invited as a club to spend three days with Miss Sherman at Bar Harbor. As a club we have accepted, and have sent your name in the list. With many regrets that you are not here to share our joy in anticipating, and with the hope that you will soon be here to share our pleasure,
Another square envelope,—this one stamped on the back with three small owls, writing that ran up-hill and down, and plenty of capitals:
"Dear Sweet Narrowby,—Isn't it perfectly splendid? I can't wait till Monday. I have got a Kate Greenaway parasol, and I am to be your chaperon. I heard mamma say she thought you needed one. I never knew men to have chaperons. Perhaps no one ever
