When the
little man reached the first landing he looked back, and directed a
strange, suspicious glance at the callers.
The opening of the parlor door discovered a room full of men, who were
sipping wine, eating cold fowl and confections, talking and laughing
loudly with each other, or exchanging repartees with a lady who stood in
the centre of the apartment and shed her light upon all. This lady was
Mrs. Grazella Jigbee Slapman.
Previous to her marriage, she had been not altogether unknown to the
corners of several weekly newspapers, under the name of "Grazella." She
had also cultivated a natural talent for painting, so assiduously, that
a little cabinet piece of hers, representing a cat, a lobster, and a
plate of fruit, was considered good enough to exhibit in the window of a
Broadway print shop, in which her uncle was a silent partner, and was
approvingly paragraphed in a paper partly owned by her first cousin. To
gifts capable of producing results like these, she added a great
aptitude for music; although an incurable indolence, she gracefully
said, had always prevented her from learning the piano.
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