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A Few Friends and How They Amused Themselves; A Tale in Nine Chapters
A Few Friends and How They Amused Themselves A Tale in Nine Chapters Author:Mary Mapes Dodge General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1869 Original Publisher: Lippincott Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can sele... more »ct from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: FIFTH EVENING. "friends' Garland" -- "who Was He?" -- "game Of The Poets." fHROUGH a strange medley of circumstances, it so chanced that the meeting held at Miss Pundaway's was, as the portly gentleman observed, rather slimly attended. The Simmonses were absent, because their " little Stevy," a pretty boy, remarkable as a sort of gilt-edged, miniature edition of his papa, had suddenly slid into the measles ; Mrs. Vandutten had a house full of company ; Miss Appoggiatura was stricken down with influenza ; the Timeeds had to attend their grandparents' golden wedding; Teresa Adams had " skated herself sick" the day before ; and the Dres- wells had gone to Washington. Even Mr. Hedges, the pale young man from Liverpool, who heretofore had seemed almost ghostly in his quiet and punctual attendance, failed to appear. Accordingly our " Few Friends" were few indeed, and would have been " far between," had they not gathered in a pleasant group before the bright fire that shone upon them in a friendly, old-fashioned way from (to the credit of the Pundaways be it said) the open grate bulging generously into the apartment. On the mantel-piece above was a vase of beautiful flowers ; near it stood a bronze Michael Angelo, who surveyed the company in shiny silence ; and on the other end stood a statuette Tasso, equally silent, shiny and brown. These three objects decided the fate of the evening. Miss Scinwig's eyes had been fastened for some moments upon the bouquet: " Can you tell," said she, turning to Miss Pundaway, " which flower among all that vaseful reminds me of you ?" " ...« less