“Take the sleeves out of your book-muslin, Annie, and that will do for dinner. You are always safe in white, and I suppose they will supply us with Camelias from the green-house for our heads.” “Book-muslins, short sleeves, and Camelia’s for dinner.” Annie’s heart beat high between expectation and fear. She almost wished the visit over, and yet would not have given it up for the world. Monday morning arrived, and an hour’s drive brought them to Woodlawn. And as they drove up through the beautiful avenues of elms, and stopped before a very large, handsome house, which commanded a beautiful lawn, Annie felt that the place quite equalled her expectations. Mrs. Hauton received them with great politeness, made a slight apology for her “lazy girls,” who were not yet down, and showed them into the breakfast-room before the young ladies made their appearance. They came gliding in presently, looking very elegant and high-bred, dressed in the finest white lawn negligées, with the prettiest little thread-lace caps on their heads; their whole toilet exquisitely fine, simple, and _recherché_, so that poor Annie felt at once the value and consolation of the expression, “_unnoticeable_,” that Kate had applied to her barège, and which had rather astonished her at the time. They did not seem to feel called upon to apologize for their not being ready to receive their guests, but only found it “very warm,” asked at what time they left the city, and were quite shocked at the early hour they mentioned, and thought it “must have been very disagreeable,” and it was evident from their manner that they would not have risen so early to come and see them. The conversation became general, if that can be called conversation which consisted of some remarks upon the long-continued drought from Mrs. Hauton, with rejoinders as to the heat and dust of the city, from Mrs. Leslie. Mr. Leslie inquired something about the state of the crops of Mr. Hauton, and Mr. Hauton asked a question or two about the new rail-road. The young ladies kept up a little scattering small-talk, consisting chiefly of questions as to who had left town, and who remained yet in the city, and where the Leslies were going, etc., all of which Annie would have thought very dull, if she had not been too much oppressed by the novelty and elegance of every thing around her to dare to think at all. After breakfast a walk was proposed through the garden, and Mrs. Hauton, with Mrs. Leslie, walking on before, the young ladies followed. Mrs. Hauton commenced a long story about her head gardener, who had behaved, she said, “very ungratefully in leaving her for a place where he could get higher wages, when she had dismissed the man she had, to take him, because he had offered to come on lower terms, and after she had kept him for a year, he had now left her, for the very wages she had given her first man; but they are all so mercenary,” she concluded with saying.