"There!" cried Rosy. "How much longer have we got to live down here among all these savages and hoodlums?" Eliza Marshall made no reply, and Rosy felt that this in itself was to have gained a point. XIII Eliza Marshall meditated on the Bates dinner for several days succeeding, and when the following Saturday morning came round she was still busy with it. Saturday was her day for going over the antiquated accumulations of her parlor; no hands ever dusted and replaced the ornaments on her what-not save her own. She had been very chary of expressing herself about Susan Bates's entertainment, even to Jane. But now she felt that the time had come when she might trust herself to speak. "I can't say I see the need of so many kinds of spoons," she said, as she transferred one of her gilt candelabra from the what-not to the contorted old rosewood centre-table: the candelabra were of an operatic cast--the one under removal represented (though all unknown to Eliza Marshall) Manrico and Leonora clasped in each other's arms beneath a bower-like tree. "Cut right through the middle, too--so that you could hardly tell whether they were spoons or forks." "What could be better for ice-cream or salad?" asked Jane, who was blooming forth as an authority on matters social. She sometimes assisted her mother on these Saturday mornings--under close supervision. "And three kinds of wineglasses," observed her mother, with some disapproval. "Sort of showy, I thought. Kind of as if they wanted to impress us, and let us see what--No!" she cried, as a figure came up the front walk, carrying a tray fastened in front. "No! 'Melia, tell him we don't want any suspenders or collar-buttons; we don't wear them." "Showy!" called Jane. "My sakes! it was the plainest thing, I ever saw at their house. If you could see _some_ of their doings!" Eliza Marshall set back the candelabrum and transferred her attention to a Rock of Ages in Parian marble. "I believe things get dirtier here every year. I'm sure more dust comes in at that window than goes out." Then: "Well, I don't see but what we're as good as anybody else; I don't see but what we are as well worth taking pains for." She ran her cloth resentfully between the arms of Faith and the arms of the cross. "Oh, dear me suz!" cried Jane; "are you trying to get the poor woman both ways? Her dinner was just right, and I am sure she took every possible pains to have it so." "What?" called her mother, craning her neck and contorting her features. A locomotive was letting off steam opposite the house, and the noise and the vapor came across the hundred yards of dead grass together. "I say it was all right," shouted Jane. "Don't you suppose she knows how to--Dear me! what's the use of trying to talk here?" She fell on the mantel-piece and dusted its vases in silent desperation.