There proved to be fine reserves of wild
raspberries and bread and butter, so that I regained my composure,
and waited impatiently for my own share of this illustrious visit
to begin. There was an instant sense of high festivity in
the evening air from the moment when our guest had so frankly
demanded the Oolong tea.
The great moment arrived. I was formally presented at the
stair-foot, and the two friends passed on to the kitchen, where I
soon heard a hospitable clink of crockery and the brisk stirring of
a tea-cup. I sat in my high-backed rocking-chair by the window in
the front room with an unreasonable feeling of being left out, like
the child who stood at the gate in Hans Andersen's story. Mrs.
Fosdick did not look, at first sight, like a person of great social
gifts. She was a serious-looking little bit of an old woman, with
a birdlike nod of the head. I had often been told that she was the
"best hand in the world to make a visit,"--as if to visit were the
highest of vocations; that everybody wished for her, while few
could get her; and I saw that Mrs.
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