They're comin'! Mother! mother!" Everybody in position, smiling and at ease.

Bell rings.

Enter the first set of visitors.

The Event of the Season has begun.
"Law! it's nothin' but the Cranes' folks! I do believe Mahala 's come in that old green de-laine she wore at the Surprise Party!" Miss Matilda had peeped through a crack of the door and made this observation and the remark founded thereon.

Continuing her attitude of attention, she overheard Mrs.Crane and her two daughters conversing in the attiring-room, up one flight.
"How fine everything is in the great house!" said Mrs.Crane,--"jest look at the picters!" "Matildy Sprowle's drawin's," said Ada Azuba, the eldest daughter.
"I should think so," said Mahala Crane, her younger sister,--a wide-awake girl, who had n't been to school for nothing, and performed a little on the lead pencil herself.