Harold had talked so fast that his grandmother could hardly follow him, but she understood what he said last, and started as if he had struck her a blow.
"Arthur Tracy! Coming home to-night!" she exclaimed. "Oh, I am so glad."
"But Mrs. Tracy did not seem to be, and I guess she wanted to stop the party," Harold said, repeating as nearly as he could what had passed between him and the lady.
Harold was full of the party to which he believed he had been invited, and when in the afternoon Dick St. Claire came to the cottage to play with him, he felt a kind of patronizing pity for his friend who was not to share his honor.
"Perhaps mother will let me come over and help you," Dick said. "I know how they do it. You mustn't talk to the people as they come up the stairs, nor even say good-evening,—only:
"'Ladies will please walk this way, and gentlemen that!'"
And Dick went through with a pantomime performance for the benefit of Harold, who, when the drill was over, felt himself competent to receive the queen's guests at the head of the great staircase in Windsor Castle.
"Yes, I know," he said, "'Ladies this way, and gentleman that;' but when am I to go down and see the dancing and get some ice-cream?"
On this point Dick was doubtful. He did not believe, he said, that waiters ever went down to see the dancing, or to get ice-cream, until the party was over, and then they ate it in the kitchen, if there was any left.
This was not a cheerful outlook for Harold, whose thoughts were more intent upon cream and dancing than upon showing the people where to go, and it was also the second time the word waiter had been used in connection with what he was expected to do. But Harold was too young to understand that he was not of the party itself. Later on it would come to him fast enough, that he was only a part of the machinery which moved the social engine. Now, he felt like the engine itself, and long before six o'clock he was dressed, and waiting anxiously for his grandmother's permission to start.
"I'll tell you all about it," he said to her. "What they do, and what they say, and what they wear, and if I can, I'll speak to Mr. Arthur Tracy and thank him for mother's grave stone."
By seven o'clock he was on his way to the park, walking rapidly, and occasionally saying aloud with a gesture of his hand to the right and the left, and a bow almost to the ground:
"Ladies, this way," and "gentlemen that."
When he reached the house the gas-jets had just been turned up, and every window was ablaze with light from the attic to the basement.
"My eye! ain't it swell!" Harold said to himself, as he stood a moment, looking at the brilliantly lighted rooms. "Don't I wish I was rich and could burn all that gas, and maybe I shall be. Grandma says Mr. Arthur Tracy was once a poor boy like me; only he had an uncle, and I haven't. I've got to earn my money, and I mean to, and sometime, maybe, I'll have a house as big as this, and just such a party, with a boy upstairs to tell 'em where to go. I wonder now if I'm expected to go into the kitchen door. Of course not. I've got on my Sunday clothes, and am invited to the party. I shall ring."
And he did ring—a sharp, loud ring, which made Mrs. Tracy, who had not yet left her room, start nervously as she wondered who had come so early.
"Old Peterkin, of course. Those whom you care for least always come first."
Peering over the banister Tom Tracy saw Harold when the door was opened, and screaming to his mother at the top of his voice, "It ain't old Peterkin, mother; it's Hal Hastings, come to the front door," he ran down the stairs, and confronting the intruder just as he was crossing the threshold, exclaimed:
"Go 'long. You hain't no business ringin' the bell as if you was a guest. Go to the kitchen door with the other servants!"
With a thrust of the hand he pushed Harold back, and was about to shut the door upon him, when, with a quick, dextrous movement, Harold darted past him into the hall, saying, as he did so:
"Darn you, Tom Tracy, I won't go to the kitchen door, and I'm not a servant, and if you call me so again I'll lick you!"
How the matter would have ended is doubtful, if Mrs. Tracy had not called from the head of the stairs:
"Thomas! Thomas Tracy! I am ashamed of you! Come to me this minute! And you, boy, go to the kitchen; or, no—now you are here, come upstairs, and I'll tell you what you are to do."
Her directions were very much like those of Dick St. Claire, except that she laid more stress upon the fact that he was not to speak to any one familiarly, but was to be in all respects a machine. Just what she meant by that Harold did not know; but he hung his cap on a bracket, and taking his place where she told him to stand, watched her admiringly as she went down the staircase, followed by her husband, who looked anxious and ill at ease.
Tom had disappeared, but his younger brother, Jack, who was wholly unlike him, came to Harold's side, and began telling him what quantities of good things there were in the dining-room and pantry, and that his Uncle Arthur was coming home that night, and his mother was so glad she cried; then, with a spring he mounted upon the banister of the long staircase, and slipped swiftly to the bottom. Ascending the stairs almost as quickly as he had gone down, he bade Harold try it with him.
"It's such fun! and mother won't care. I've done it forty times," he said, as Harold demurred; and then, as the temptation became too strong to be resisted, two boys instead of one rode down the banister, and landed in the lower hall, and two pairs of little legs ran nimbly up the stairs just as the door opened and admitted the first arrival.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PARTY.
THE invitations had been for half-past seven, and precisely at that hour Peterkin arrived, magnificent in his swallow-tail and white shirt front, where an enormous diamond shone conspicuously. With him came Mrs. Peterkin, whose name was Mary Jane, but whom her husband always called May Jane. She was a frail, pale-faced little woman, who had once been Grace Atherton's maid, and had married Peterkin for his money. This was her first appearance at a grand party, and in her excitement and timidity she did not hear Harold's thrice repeated words, "Ladies go that way," but followed her husband into the gentlemen's dressing-room, where she deposited her wraps, and then, shaking in every limb, descended to the drawing-room, where Peterkin's loud voice was soon heard, as he slapped his host on the shoulder, and said:
"You see, we are here on time, though May Jane said it was too early. But I s'posed half-past seven meant half-past seven, and then I wanted a little time to talk up the ropes with you. We are going to run you in, you bet!" and again his coarse laugh thrilled every nerve in Mrs. Tracy's body, and she longed for fresh arrivals to help quiet this vulgar man.
Soon they began to come by twos, and threes, and sixes, and Harold was kept busy with his "Ladies this way, and gentlemen that."
After Mrs. Peterkin had gone down stairs, leaving her wraps in the gentlemen's room, Harold, who knew they did not belong there, had carried them to the ladies' room and deposited them upon the bed, just as the girl who was to be in attendance appeared at her post, asking him sharply why he was in there rummaging the ladies' things.
"I'm not rummaging. They are Mrs. Peterkin's. She left them in the other room, and I brought them here," Harold said, as he returned to the hall, eager and excited, and interested in watching the people as they came up the stairs and went down again. With the quick instinct of a bright, intelligent boy, he decided who was accustomed to society and who was not, and leaning over the banister, when not on duty, watched them as they entered the drawing-room and were received