I myself have laboriously carried out little trays of orange-marmalade tumblers which I am sure never did any good to anybody but Mrs. Maginnis' children, who used to come bare-legged, with their tousled heads, freckles, and blue eyes to fetch the doctor's wash. It took no slight gymnastic ability to carry a basket or waiter of such unmanageable articles as marmalade-glasses, change cars twice, and pick one's way across the ankle-deep mud of Richmond Avenue, and along the wooden sidewalk full of loose uncertain boards, as far as Doctor Vardaman's house. On a gusty April day with a promise of rain in the air, one must go cumbered with an umbrella and overshoes; only fancy what that was to a young woman clad in the fashionable costume of eighty-one, to wit: a skin-tight navy-blue silk "jersey" waist, a navy-blue bunting skirt kilt-pleated with a voluminous round overskirt, and a pocket with purse and handkerchief securely concealed somewhere amongst the folds in the rear; French-heeled shoes, tan-coloured suede "Bernhardt" gloves, and a tremendous erection of velvet and feathers that we called a "Gainsborough hat" over all! These modes have mercifully gone out; but not more, I think, than the simple and kindly custom of sending glasses of jelly about to one's friends; I should not presume to ask one of my young acquaintances to perform so unseemly an office; no one either makes jelly or sends it as a present any more. Fortunately I fell in with Gwynne Peters on the last lap of the journey, that is, the Lexington and Amherst cars. "Here, let me take that thing," said he, and as I thankfully gave up to him my burden of sweets--my wrists, not too loosely cased in the tan-coloured "Bernhardts" fairly aching with the weight--he went on: "What do you think? I believe we've got the old place rented at last! Templeton's going to have some people out there this afternoon and I'm to meet them. But they've been out two or three times already, and he says they've taken a fancy to it. The man--he's a Colonel Pallinder from Mobile or New Orleans or somewhere--says it reminds him of his old home in Virginia, 'befo' the wah,' you know, that's the way he talks." "Are they nice? I mean--anybody we'd _know_?" "Why, I don't know--yes, I guess so. They're Episcopalians, they were asking Templeton about Trinity Church. I haven't met them yet, and you can't go much by what Templeton says--a fellow like that doesn't know anything except whether people are respectable or not. They're all grown-ups, no children. I think there's a young lady; Templeton's lost in admiration of Mrs. Pallinder--told me two or three times, 'She's an elegant lady, Mr. Peters, very lah-de-dah manners, you know, stylish as she can be!' Doctor Vardaman's met them; but there's no use asking the doctor anything, he just grinned when I mentioned the Pallinders, and said he didn't doubt they'd be a great addition to the neighbourhood."