Before the earliest Ruggles could wake and toot his five-cent tin horn,
Mrs. Ruggles was up and stirring about the house, for it was a gala day
in the family. Gala day! I should think so! Were not her nine
"childern" invited to a dinner-party at the great house, and weren't
they going to sit down free and equal with the mightiest in the land?
She had been preparing for this grand occasion ever since the receipt
of the invitation, which, by the way, had been speedily enshrined in an
old photograph frame and hung under the looking-glass in the most
prominent place in the kitchen, where it stared the occasional visitor
directly in the eye, and made him pale with envy:
"BIRDS' NEST, Dec. 17th, 188-.