“Now jess listen at dat chile! Ole marster! She know better! She know who ’tis I’se ’spressin’ ’bout f’ all she a-layin’ d’yar squinched up in dat bed, making out she ’sleep. D’yar now, what I tell you!” exclaimed she, as Alice sprang suddenly up in bed, her eyes sparkling, her color high, her dishevelled hair in a golden foam about her temples. “’Sleep, was she! h’yah, h’yah, h’yah! Well, to-be-sho, talk ’bout de young gent’men cert’n’y were de wakinest-up talk for a young lady dat eber dis ole nigger did see. To-be-sho! To-be-sho! Lord a’ mussy!” added she, rocking to and fro and clapping on her knees with both hands, as Alice, with a light bound, sprang into the middle of the floor. “Ef I didn’t fotch her clean out o’ bed!” And the hilarious old domestic wiped the tears from her eyes with a corner of her check apron. “Well, now, and what _is_ she up to?” added she, as Alice ran nimbly across the room and opened a closet. “Aunt Phœbe,” said Alice, advancing with all the solemnity of a presentation orator, “permit me to offer you, as a slight testimonial of my unbounded esteem, this trivial memento. Within this package is a dress, selected especially for you with the greatest care, at the most fashionable store in Richmond. Wear it, and rest assured that the dress will not become you more than you will become the dress.” And after executing, with her tiny little feet, a variety of droll capers, all the while maintaining a look of preternatural solemnity, she placed the package in the arms of the amazed Phœbe, with a tragic extension of her right arm, immediately thereafter dropping one of the most elaborately grotesque courtesies ever seen off the comic stage. “Lord a’ mussy, what kind o’ funny lingo is—” Squeak! squeak! Bang! bang! And two girls, but partially dressed, tumbled tumultuously into the room, shrieking and slamming the door after them. The chemists tell us that if you separate two gases by a membrane, they will insist upon mingling; and, not knowing why this takes place, they have christened the process endosmose and exosmose. Sociology furnishes a noteworthy parallelism in the endosmose and exosmose of girls dressing for breakfast in a country house. You may stow as many as you will into as many rooms as you choose, but every one of them will find her way into every other room before her toilet is complete; and, by the end of a week, the raiment of each will be impartially distributed throughout the several chambers allotted to their sex. Their movements on these occasions are peculiar. “Where _is_ that other stocking of mine? Oh, I know!” And she approaches the door of her room, opens it a couple of inches, and warily reconnoitres with eye and ear. Seizing an opportune moment when the coast is clear, she darts like a meteor across the hall, and into a neighboring room— “I say, girls, have any of you seen a stray stocking?” etc., etc.