The epergne with its gold and silver fern leaves climbing up a thin stalk of glass to its top dish for fruit had always come out for dinner parties and she liked not innovations.

It was indeed as much as Halcyone could do to get all the flowers of the same kind, a nasturtium and a magenta stock had with care to be smuggled away, leaving the sweet peas sole occupants of the sand.

But the effect was very festive and the two carried their work into the dining-room well pleased.
The best Sevres dinner-set was had out, which that traveler Timothy had brought from Paris among other things, and the best cut glass and rat-tailed silver.

Old William, assisted by Hester and Priscilla, had been busy polishing most of the day--while the cook and the "young person from the village" were contriving wonders in the vast kitchen.
And punctually at seven in broad daylight, the three Misses La Sarthe, the two elder in their finest mauve silk evening dresses, awaited their guests in the Italian parlor.
Miss Roberta's heart had not fluttered like this since a county ball some forty years ago when a certain whiskered captain of a dashing cavalry regiment stationed at Upminster had whispered in her ear.
Priscilla had let down Halcyone's white muslin frock and as the tucks were rather large, it was longer than she intended, so that the child might easily have been taken for a girl of fifteen, and her perfect feet were encased in a pair of old-fashioned bronze slippers with elastics crossed up the legs of her white silk stockings.

A fillet of blue silk kept back the soft cloud of her mouse-colored hair.
Mr.Miller was announced first--very nervous, as usual, and saying the wrong thing in his flurry.