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The Old Folks’ Party
by
Jessie, being rather taller than the others, had affected the stoop of age very successfully. She wore a black dress spotted with white, and her whitened hair was arranged with a high comb. She was the only one without spectacles or eyeglasses. Henry looked older and feebler than any of the company. His scant hair hung in thin and long white locks, and his tall, slender figure had gained a still more meagre effect from his dress, while his shoulders were bowed in a marked stoop; his gait was rigid and jerky. He assisted himself with a gold-headed cane, and sat in his chair leaning forward upon it.
George, on the other hand, had followed the hint of his father’s figure in his make-up, and appeared as a rubicund old gentleman, large in the waist, bald, with an apoplectic tendency, a wheezy asthmatic voice, and a full white beard.
Nellie wore her hair in a row of white curls on each side of her head, and in every detail of her dress and air affected the coquettish old lady to perfection, for which, of course, she looked none the younger. Her cheeks were rouged to go with that style.
Frank was the ideal of the sprightly little old gentleman. With his brisk air, natty eye-glasses, cane and gloves, and other items of dress in the most correct taste, he was quite the old beau. His white hair was crispy, brushed back, and his snowy mustache had rather a rakish effect.
Although the transformation in each case was complete, yet quite enough of the features, expression, or bearing was apparent through the disguise to make the members of the party entirely recognizable to each other, though less intimate acquaintances would perhaps have been at first rather puzzled. At Henry’s suggestion they had been photographed in their costumes, in order to compare the ideal with the actual when they should be really old.
“It is n’t much trouble, and the old folks will enjoy it some day. We ought to consider them a little,” Henry had said, meaning by “the old folks” their future selves.
It had been agreed that, in proper deference to the probabilities, one, at least, of the girls ought to illustrate the fat old lady. But they found it impossible to agree which should sacrifice herself, for no one of the three could, in her histrionic enthusiasm, quite forget her personal appearance. Nellie flatly refused to be made up fat, and Jessie as flatly, while both the girls had too much reverence for the sweet dignity of Mary Fellows’s beauty to consent to her taking the part, and so the idea was given up.
It had been a happy thought of Mary’s to get her two younger sisters, girls of eleven and sixteen, to be present, to enhance the venerable appearance of the party by the contrast of their bloom and freshness.
“Are these your little granddaughters?” inquired Henry, benevolently inspecting them over the tops of his spectacles as he patted the elder of the two on the head, a liberty she would by no means have allowed him in his proper character, but which she now seemed puzzled whether to resent or not.
“Yes,” replied Mary, with an indulgent smile. “They wanted to see what an old folks’ party was like, though I told them they wouldn’t enjoy it much. I remember I thought old people rather dull when I was their age.”
Henry made a little conversation with the girls, asking them the list of fatuous questions by which adults seem fated to illustrate the gulf between them and childhood in the effort to bridge it.
“Annie, dear, just put that ottoman at Mrs. Hyde’s feet,” said Mary to one of the little girls. “I ‘m so glad you felt able to come out this evening, Mrs. Hyde! I understood you had not enjoyed good health this summer.”
“I have scarcely been out of my room since spring, until recently,” replied Jessie. “Thank you, my dear” (to the little girl); “but Dr. Sanford has done wonders for me. How is your health now, Mrs. Fellows?”