Albina put on the new dress that the mantua-maker had made for her. When she tried it on the preceding evening Miss Matson declared that "it fitted like wax." She now found that it was scarcely possible to get it on at all, and that one side of the forebody was larger than the other. Miss Matson was called up, and by dint of the pulling, stretching, and smoothing well known to mantua-makers, and still more by means of her pertinacious assurances that the dress had no fault whatever, Albina was obliged to acknowledge that she _could_ wear it, and the redundancy of the large side was pinned down and pinned over. In sticking in her comb she broke it in half, and it was long before she could arrange her hair to her satisfaction without it. Before she had completed her toilette, several of the ladies arrived and came into the room; and Albina was obliged to snatch up her paraphernalia, and make her escape into the next apartment. At last she was dressed--she went down stairs. The company arrived fast, and the party began. Bromley Cheston had come early to assist in doing the honours, and as he led Albina to a seat, he saw that, in spite of her smiles, she looked weary and out of spirits; and he pitied her. "After all," thought he, "there is much that is interesting about Albina Marsden." The party was _very_ select, consisting of the élite of the village and its neighbourhood; but still, as is often the case, those whose presence was most desirable had sent excuses, and those who were not wanted had taken care to come. And Miss Boreham (a young lady who, having nothing else to recommend her, had been invited solely on account of the usual elegance of her attire, and whose dress was expected to add prodigiously to the effect of the rooms), came most unaccountably in an old faded frock of last year's fashion, with her hair quite plain, and tucked behind her ears with two side-combs. Could she have had a suspicion of the reason for which she was generally invited, and have therefore perversely determined on a reaction? The Montagues sat together in a corner, putting up their eye-glasses at every one that entered the room, and criticising the company in loud whispers to each other; poor Mrs. Marsden endeavouring to catch opportunities of paying her court to them. About nine o'clock, appeared an immense cap of blond lace, gauze riband, and flowers; and under the cap was Mrs. Washington Potts, a little, thin, trifling-looking woman with a whitish freckled face, small sharp features, and flaxen hair. She leaned on the arm of Mr. Washington Potts, who was nothing in company or anywhere else; and she led by the hand a little boy in a suit of scarlet, braided and frogged with blue: a pale rat-looking child, whose name she pronounced Laughy-yet, meaning La Fayette; and who being the youngest scion of the house of Potts, always went to parties with his mother, because he would not stay at home.