LITMIR.BIZ

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of her early life; his sons developed an amount of manliness and energy which was more than enough to compensate for what they had lost in worldly prospects. He enjoyed his small, quiet house and his reduced establishment as he never had done a more brilliant one, for he felt that it was founded upon certainties and involved no risks. Mrs. Van Arsdel was a sweet-tempered, kindly woman, and his daughters had each and every one met the reverse in a way that showed the sterling quality which is often latent under gay and apparently thoughtless young womanhood.

      Aunt Maria, however, settled it in her own mind, with the decision with which she usually settled her relatives' affairs, that this state of things would be only temporary.

      "Of course," she said to her numerous acquaintances, "of course, Mr. Van Arsdel will go into business again – he is only waiting for a good opening – he'll be up again in a few years where he was before."

      And to Mrs. Van Arsdel she said, "Nelly, you must keep him up – you mustn't hear of his sinking down and doing nothing" —doing nothing being his living contentedly on a comfortable salary and going without the "pomps and vanities." "Your husband, of course, will go into some operations to retrieve his fortunes, you know," she said. "What is he thinking of?"

      "Well, really, Maria, I don't see as he has the least intention – he seems perfectly satisfied to live as we do."

      "You must put him up to it, Nelly – depend upon it, he's in danger of sinking down and giving up; and he has splendid business talents. He should go to operating in stocks, you see. Why, men make fortunes in that way. Look at the Bubbleums, and the Flashes, they were all down two years ago, and now they're up higher than ever, and they did it all in stocks. Your husband would find plenty of men ready to go in with him and advance money to begin on. No man is more trusted. Why, Nelly, that man might die a millionaire as well as not, and you ought to put him up to it; it's a wife's business to keep her husband up."

      "I have tried to, Maria; I have been just as cheerful as I knew how to be, and I've retrenched and economized everywhere, as all the girls do – they are wonderful, those girls! To see them take hold so cheerfully and help about household matters, you never would dream that they had not been brought up to it; and they are so prudent about their clothes – so careful and saving. And then the boys are getting on so well. Tom has gone into surveying with a will, and is going out with Smithson's party to the Rocky Mountains, and Hal has just got a good situation in Boston – "

      "Oh, yes, that is all very well; but, Nelly, that isn't what I mean. You know that when men fail in business they are apt to get blue and discouraged and give up enterprise, and so gradually sink down and lose their faculties. That's the way old Mr. Snodgrass did when he failed."

      "But I don't think, Maria, that there is the least danger of my husband's losing his mind – or sinking down, as you call it. I never saw him more cheerful and seem to take more comfort of his life. Mr. Van Arsdel never did care for style – except as he thought it pleased me – and I believe he really likes the way we live now better than the way we did before; he says he has less care."

      "And you are willing to sink down and be a nobody, and have no carriage, and rub round in omnibuses, and have to go to little mean private country board instead of going to Newport, when you might just as well get back the position that you had. Why, it's downright stupidity, Nelly!"

      "As to mean country board," pleaded Mrs. Van Arsdel, "I don't know what you mean, Maria. We kept our old homestead up there in Vermont, and it's a very respectable place to spend our summer in."

      "Yes, and what chances have the girls up there – where nobody sees them but oxen? The girls ought to be considered. For their sakes you ought to put your husband up to do something. It's cruel to them, brought up with the expectations they have had, to have to give all up just as they are coming out. If there is any time that a mother must feel the want of money it is when she has daughters just beginning to go into society; and it is cruel towards young girls not to give them the means of dressing and doing a little as others do; and dress does cost so abominably, now-a-days; it's perfectly frightful – people cannot live creditably on what they used to."

      "Yes, certainly, it is frightful to think of the requirements of society in these matters," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "Now, when you and I were girls, Maria, you know we managed to appear well on a very little. We embroidered our own capes and collars, and wore white a good deal, and cleaned our own gloves, and cut and fitted our own dresses; but, then dress was not what it is now. Why, making a dress now is like rigging a man-of-war – it's so complicated – there are so many parts, and so much trimming."

      "Oh, it's perfectly fearful," said Aunt Maria; "but, then, what is one to do? If one goes into society with people who have so much of all these things, why one must, at least, make some little approach to decent appearance. We must keep within sight of them. All I ask," she added, meekly, "is to be decent. I never expect to run into the extremes those Elmores do – the waste and the extravagance that there must be in that family! And there's Mrs. Wat Sydney coming out with the whole new set of her Paris dresses. I should like to know, for curiosity's sake, just what that woman has spent on her dresses!"

      "Yes," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, warming with the subject, "you know she had all her wardrobe from Worth, and Worth's dresses come to something. Why, Polly told me that the lace alone on some of those dresses would be a fortune."

      "And just to think that Eva might have married Wat Sydney," said Aunt Maria. "It does seem as if things in this world fell out on purpose to try us!"

      "Well, I suppose they do, and we ought to try and improve by them," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, who had some weak, gentle ideas of a moral purpose in existence, to which even the losses and trials of lace and embroidery might be made subservient. "After all," she added, "I don't know but we ought to be contented with Eva's position. Eva always was a peculiar child. Under all her sweetness and softness she has quite a will of her own; and, indeed, Harry is a good fellow, and doing well in his line. He makes a very good income, for a beginning, and he is rising every day in the literary world, and I don't see but that they have as good an opportunity to make their way in society as the Sydneys with all their money."

      "Sophie Sydney is perfectly devoted to Eva," said Aunt Maria.

      "And well she may be," answered Mrs. Van Arsdel, "in fact, Eva made that match; she actually turned him over to her. You remember how she gave her that prize croquet-pin that Sydney gave her, and how she talked to Sydney, and set him to thinking of Sophie – oh, pshaw! Sydney never would have married that girl in the world if it had not been for Eva."

      "Well," said Aunt Maria, "it's as well to cultivate that intimacy. It will be a grand summer visiting place at their house in Newport, and we want visiting places for the girls. I have put two or three anchors out to the windward, in that respect. I am going to have the Stephenson girls at my house this winter, and your girls must help show them New York, and cultivate them, and then there will be a nice visiting place for them at Judge Stephenson's next summer. You see the Judge lives within an easy drive of Newport, so that they can get over there, and see and be seen."

      "I'm sure, Maria, it's good in you to be putting yourself out for my girls."

      "Pshaw, Nelly, just as if your girls were not mine – they are all I have to live for. I can't stop any longer now, because I must catch the omnibus to go down to Eva's; I am going to spend the day with her."

      "How nicely Eva gets along," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, with a little pardonable motherly pride; "that girl takes to housekeeping as if it came natural to her."

      "Yes," said Aunt Maria; "you know I have had Eva a great deal under my own eye, first and last, and it shows that early training will tell." Aunt Maria picked up this crumb of self-glorification with an easy matter-of-fact air which was peculiarly aggravating to her sister.

      In her own mind Mrs. Van Arsdel thought it a little too bad. "Maria always did take the credit of everything that turned out well in my family," she said to herself, "and blamed me for all that went wrong."

      But she was too wary to murmur out loud, and bent her head to the yoke in silence.

      "Eva needs a little showing and cautioning," said Aunt Maria; "that Mary of hers ought to be watched, and I shall tell her so – she

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