“There! there is your dress for this evening, my dear. How do you like it?” asked the little lady, holding up the dress in triumph. “It is very beautiful, and I am very grateful to you, Mrs. Houston.” “‘Mrs. Houston!’ There it is again! You will not say ‘mamma.’ By-and-by, I suppose, you will expect me also to say ‘Mrs. Houston,’ and we, a mother and daughter-in-law, shall be formally ‘Mrs. Houston-ing’ each other. Well, let that pass--‘sufficient unto the day,’ etc. Now, about this dress. You do not, after all, look as if you half liked it? It is true, I know, that velvet is rather matronly to wear for a girl of fifteen; but then, when one is in mourning, the choice of material is not very extensive; and besides, for Christmas, velvet may not be very much out of place, even on a young person. But I am sorry you don’t like it,” concluded Nellie, regretfully dropping the dress that she had been holding up to exhibition. “Oh, I do like it, very much, indeed. I should be very tasteless not to like it, and very thankless not to feel your kindness. The dress is as beautiful as can be--only too fine for me,” said Margaret. “Not the least so, my dear girl. Consider,” replied the little lady, launching out into a strain of good-humored compliment upon her “daughter’s” face and figure, riches, position, prospects, etc. Margaret arrested the flow of flattery by quietly and gratefully accepting the dress. She would have preferred to wear, even upon the coming festive evening, the nunlike black bombazine, that, ever since her mother’s death, had been her costume. But, in very truth, her mind was now too heavily oppressed with a private and unshared responsibility, to admit of her giving much thought to the subject of her toilet. Her neatness was habitual, mechanical; beyond the necessity of being neat, dress was to her a matter of indifference. Nellie next took out a small morocco case. “And here,” she said, “is Colonel Houston’s Christmas offering to his little daughter-in-law.” Margaret opened the casket, and found a beautiful necklace and bracelet of jet, set in gold. “I will wear them to-night, and thank the kind donor in person,” said Miss Helmstedt, putting it beside her book on the stand. Mrs. Houston then bustled out of the room, leaving the young girl to her coveted quiet. Late in the afternoon, the Christmas party began to assemble--a mixed company of about forty individuals, comprising old, middle-aged, and young persons of both sexes. The evening was spent, according to programme, in tea-drinking, parlor games, tableaux, cards and conversation, _i. e._, gossip, _i. e._, scandal.