“I declare,” said the ever laughing Louisa, “I wish something would happen to startle and confound us among our ‘dear five hundred friends,’ even a little bit of a volcano in our domestic circle would not be amiss. Such an event, now, as Mary Ware’s elopement! Think what a shaking that gave our faculties! why it lasted us full a week for steady talking.” “Well, I don’t see but Alice or I must be packing up a small bundle, and getting a farewell letter ready for you, just for the sake of variety,” said the grandmother, gayly. The door opened and admitted a tall and very much dressed woman, who advanced with much liveliness, and greeted the trio. The usual topics that fill out a ten minutes’ fashionable call were discussed with great spirit and volubility by all the ladies; the guest repeated in her farewell, the vivacious interest of her salutation, and tripped lightly down to her carriage. “There, grandmother—there is a face! Now, where is the epic poem to which it is the index?” said Alice. “What do you read, my dears?” “I read,” said Alice, “a life spent in much the same round of calls and visits as she has been making this morning. A mind fully occupied with the genealogies of all the families in Philadelphia, that are at all worth knowing. I dare say she knows more now about my grandfather than I do myself—she does, to be sure, if she knows any thing.” Alice stopped, and Louisa added, “I have read something, dear grandmother, that is more objectionable than gayety in Mrs. Ellicott’s face. Gayety I love dearly in old people—I love yours—” “Calling Mrs. Ellicott ‘old people,’ Louisa! you are certainly stark mad! with all those long white teeth glittering defiance of such a calumny.” “Gently! gently!” said Madam Stanwood; “teeth to the contrary notwithstanding, Mrs. Ellicott is my senior by some years.” “But how different!” exclaimed Alice, warmly, “how different her gayety and yours—as different as lightning and sunshine—” “Nay, Alice,” said Madam Stanwood, in a serious tone, “I must protest against being compared or contrasted with Mrs. Ellicott. I asked you what you read in _her_ face. A capability, at least, of feeling and suffering?” “You will think me satirical, grandmother; but she does make other people suffer so much, that—but I wont say it—and yet that hard face, those authoritative manners, that ever smiling mouth, put them altogether, she is just one of those persons I should think born not to suffer any thing, nor to feel much for any body.” Madame Stanwood looked at the placid face, which had just expressed so harsh an opinion, with a melancholy smile. “Come hither, Alice—and you, Louisa; let me teach you not to guess from the froth on the tossing wave, what is the deep calm that lies a thousand fathoms below. Long may it be before you know from the quick sympathy of experience, to detect the sigh under the smile, or to see how the lonely tears quench the conventional sparkles that seemed so brilliant.”