"Rockaways and bivalves!" thinks I to myself; "what kind of animals are they? Never heard of bivalves before in my whole life, but the other puts me in mind of old Grandma Frost's splint-bottomed rocking-chair. No need of saying rock-away to her, for she was always on the teater. But she's dead now, and the last time I ever saw her Boston rocker it was away back of the chimney, at the old homestead, scrouged in between the stones and the clapboards, with one rocker torn off and an arm broken. I couldn't help asking Cousin E. E. if she remembered that chair. "Oh, yes," says she; "somebody hustled it off into the garret the moment she'd done with it. I saw it there a year after the funeral, with the patchwork cushion of red and blue cloth moth-eaten and gray with dust." Now, my father owned the old homestead while he lived, and I took this as a slur on our branch of the Frost family. This riled me internally, but I couldn't contradict her, and felt myself blushing hotly, rather ashamed of the Frost family. But the truth is, as a race, we are none of us given to much antiquity. No female of our family was ever known to get over forty-nine in her own person, though many of them have lived to a wonderful old age. This was curious, but a fact. Such unaccountable things do sometimes run in families. But these are facts that I sometimes choke down--I did it now. "We were talking of something else, and got on to chairs," says I. "No uncommon thing," says Cousin Dempster, laughing. I laughed too, but that child turned up her sniffy nose, and, looking at her father, said: "The idea!" which wilted him down at once. "But these bivalves and Rockaways--what do they do with them?" "Why, eat them, of course." "Eat them? How?" "Raw." "Mercy on me! Raw?" "Well, Cousin E. E., it shan't be said that you are related to a coward. I'll go down to see these city lions; but when?" "Well, to-day," says Cousin Dempster. "Just come down to the office about noon, and I'll go with you." "Just so," says I, feeling a little shivery. "Would you like to go, darling?" says he speaking to his little girl, as if half afraid. "Me, papa, down to that horrid place all meat and butter, and fish and things? The idea!" I was so grateful to the stuck-up thing, that I'm afraid Cousin E. E. saw it in my eyes, for she sort of clouded over and said: "That, after all, she didn't think she cared to go, but that needn't keep Cousin Phœmie at home. Mr. Dempster would take her." "Well, just as you please," says he, a-taking his hat, "I'm at your service--singly or in groups. Good-morning." Well, in the afternoon, I asked Cousin E. E., in a kind of natural way, if she meant to go to that feed. But that child called out: "No, no, mamma, don't go; I won't be left alone." So Cousin E. E. said she had a bad headache, and thought she wouldn't go, but that needn't keep me.