Yes, it was a great occasion. Old Chester talked of it for months; not even William Rives's most unexpected and unexplainable departure the next day on the morning stage could divert the appalled, excited, disapproving interest that lasted the year out. Not even Miss Lydia's continued faithfulness to the portrait, which had condoned so many offences in the past, could soften Old Chester's very righteous indignation. There were, it must be admitted, one or two who professed that they did not share the disapproval of all right-thinking persons; one was, if you please, Mr. Smith! (He was one of the new Smiths, so one might expect anything from him.) He had not been invited to the party, but when he heard of it he roared with most improper mirth. "Well done!" he said. "By Jove! what a game old party. Well done! The money was champagne on an empty stomach; of course, she got drunk. It would have been cheaper to have bought a bottle of the genuine article and shut herself up for twenty-four hours. Well, it's worth the cost of a new chimney. I'll put her repairs through, Dr. Lavendar--unless you want to get up another present?" And then he roared again. Very ill-bred man he was. Dr. Lavendar said that there would not be another present. He said Miss Lydia had a right, in his opinion, to spend her money as she chose; but there would not be another present. And then he walked home, blinking and smiling. "Smith's a good fellow," he said to himself, "if he is one of the new folks. But what I'd like to know is: _did Lydia think $100 a low price?_" AMELIA I The exception that proved Old Chester's rule as to the subjection of Youth was found in the household of Mr. Thomas Dilworth. When the Dilworth children (at least the two girls) hung about their father when he came home at night or teased and scolded and laughed at him at their friendly breakfast-table, an observer might have thought himself miles away from Old Chester and its well-brought-up Youth. The way those girls talk to Thomas Dilworth! "Where will it end?" said Old Chester, solemnly. For instance, the annual joke in the Dilworth family was that father had been in love with mother for as many years as she was old, less so many minutes. Now, imagine Old Chester children indulging in such familiarities! Yet on Mrs. Dilworth's birthday this family witticism was always in order: "Father, how long have you been mother's beau?" And Thomas, rosy, handsome, looking at least ten years younger than his Amelia, would say: "Well, let's see: forty-one years" (or two or three, as the case might be), "eleven months, twenty-nine days, twenty-three hours, and forty minutes; she was twenty minutes old when I first laid eyes on her, and during those twenty minutes I was heart-whole." But Mrs. Dilworth, smiling vaguely behind her coffee-cups, would protest: "I never heard anything about it, Tom, until you were sixteen."