"Why, it will be perfectly delightful!" answered Cousin Sarah Cray, looking at her in astonishment. "Every one will be there. Let me see: there will be ourselves, four; and Miss Polly and Miss Leontine, six; then the Debbses, thirteen--fourteen if Mrs. Debbs comes; the Rev. Mr. Bushey and his wife, sixteen. And perhaps there will be some one else," she added, hopefully; "perhaps somebody has some one staying with them." "Thomas Scotts, the tub man, will not be invited," remarked Cicely. "He will walk by on the outside. And look in." "There's nothing I admire more than the way you pronounce that name Debbs," observed Eve. "It's plain Debbs; yet you call it Dessss--holding on to all the s's, and hardly sounding the b at all--so that you almost make it rhyme with noblesse." "That's because we like 'em, I reckon," responded Cousin Sarah Cray. "They certainly are the _sweetest_ family!" "There's a faint trace of an original theme in Matilda. The others are all variations," said the caustic Miss Bruce. They went to the party. "Theme and variations all here," said Cicely, as they passed the open door of the parlor on their way up-stairs to lay aside their wraps; "they haven't spared us a trill." "Well, you won't be spared either," said Cousin Sarah Cray. "_You'll_ have to sing." She proved a true prophet; Cicely was called upon to add what she could to the entertainments of the evening. Her voice was slender and clear; to-night it pleased her to sing straight on, so rapidly that she made mince-meat of the words of her song, the delicate little notes almost seeming to come from a flute, or from a mechanical music-bird screwed to a chandelier. Later, however, Miss Matilda Debbs supplied the missing expression when she gave them: "Slee--ping, I _dreamed_, love, Dreamed, love, of thee; O'er--ther--bright _waves_, love, Float--ing were we." Cicely seemed possessed by one of her wild moods. "I've been to the window; the tar-and-turpentine man is looking over the gate," she said, in a low voice, to Eve. "I'm going out to say to him, 'Scotts, wha hae! Send in a tub.'" Presently she came by Eve's chair again. "Have you seen the geranium in Miss Leontine's hair? Let us get grandpa out on the veranda with her, alone; she has been madly in love with him ever since he chucked her under the chin. What's more, grandpa knows it, too, and he's awfully frightened; he always goes through the back streets now, like a thief." There was a peal at the door-bell. "Tar-and-turpentine man coming in," murmured Cicely. Susannah appeared with a letter. "Fer Mis' Morrison," she said.