“I am going to think this matter out to a practical issue, if it takes me all night!” said Mrs. Hiller, positively. “It may be that I am rowing against wind and tide, as you say, but I will hold to the oars until I am hopelessly swamped, or reach land!”

Her husband laughed. Not sneeringly; but as good-natured men always do laugh when women talk of finding their way out of a labyrinth by means of the clue of argument.

“You will accomplish no more than your conventions and women’s rights books”—

“Don’t call them mine!” protested the wife.

“I speak of the sex at large, my love. No more, then, than women’s rights books and conventions have achieved. All their battle for the equality of the sexes; the liberation of women from the necessity of marriage as a means of livelihood; for more avenues of remunerative labor, and the acknowledgment of the dignity of the same—now that the smoke has cleared away, and combatants and spectators can look about them—is seen to have resulted in nothing, or next to nothing. You have encouraged a few more women to paint poor pictures, and spoil blocks and plates in attempts to practise engraving; put some at bookkeepers’ desks where they are half paid; crowded the board-rooms of our public schools with applicants at the rate of a hundred for each vacancy; induced a similar rush upon telegraph offices, and every other place where ‘light, lady-like labor’ can be procured; brought down, rather than raised the salaries in each of these departments of industry—and made marriage more than ever the summum bonum of every thinking workwoman—the shining gate that is to give her liberation from ill-requited toil.”

“Philip! how you exaggerate!”

“Not in the least, my dear, sanguine wife! Who puts on her rose-colored spectacles whenever the subject of ‘woman’s emancipation’ is brought forward. I have studied this matter as closely as you have; hopefully, for a while, but, of late, with the fast-growing conviction that Nature and Society yoked are too strong a team for you to pull against. Combat the assertion as you will,—it is natural for a woman to look forward to matrimony as her happiest destiny; to desire, and to bring it about by every means which seems to her consistent with modesty and self-respect. And to this conclusion Society holds her by the refusal to receive into the ‘best circles’ her who earns her living by her own labor. Mrs. Million treads the charmed arena by virtue of her husband’s wealth. But, when Mrs. Sangpur is envious of her dear friend’s latest turn-out in equipage, dress, or furniture, she recurs, tauntingly, to the time when Mrs. Million was a work-girl in Miss Fitwell’s establishment, and shrugs her patrician shoulders over ‘new people.’ As Miss Fitwell’s assistant, forewoman, and successor, Miss Bias—now Mrs. Million—were she rich, refined, beautiful, could yet never hope for a card even to one of Mrs. Sangpur’s mass parties.”

“But there are distinctions of social degree, Philip, which must be maintained. You don’t bring your bootmaker home to dine with Judge Wright, or Honorable Senator Rider.”

“I am not a reformer, my love. When my bootmaker fits himself for the society of those you name, he will be welcomed by them, and his early history referred to as an honor, not disgrace. The annals of Court and Congress will tell you this. To return to the original question; I insist there is a want of practicalness—I won’t say of common sense—in your reform, as heretofore conducted; that no one woman in five thousand, especially in what are called the higher walks of life, is able to support herself, or would be allowed by popular sentiment to do so, were she able. There is a screw loose somewhere, and very loose at that. I, for one, am never rid of the rattle. Maybe, because I am the father of three daughters. If I had sons, I should be condemned by the entire community; stand convicted at the bar of my own conscience, if I had not trained each of them to some trade or profession. As it is, the case stands thus: I may live long enough to accumulate a fair competency for each of my girls, a sum, the interest of which will support her comfortably; for she, being a woman, will never increase the bulk of the principal. My more reasonable hope is to see her married to an energetic business man, or one who has inherited a fortune and knows how to take care of it. This accomplished, parental responsibility is supposed to end, so far as provision for the life that now is, goes. If her husband should fail, or die a poor man—the Lord help her and her children—if I cannot!”

He was not talking flippantly now. As he knocked the ashes from the tip of his cigar into the grate, his face was grave to sorrowfulness.

“Our girls have been carefully educated,” said Mrs. Hiller, a little hurt at the turn the dialogue had taken. “In this country a thorough education is a fortune. They could set up a school.”

“To compete with a thousand others conducted by those who have been trained expressly for this profession; whom constant practice has made au fait to the ever-changing modes of instruction and fashionable text-books. Why, I, whose Latin salutatory was praised as a model of classic composition, and who read Horace, Sallust, and Livy in the original almost every day, cannot understand more than half the quotations spouted in the court-house and at lawyers’ dinners, by youngsters who have learned the ‘continental method’ of pronunciation. I cannot even parse English, for the very parts of speech are disguised under new names. A noun-substantive is something else, an article is a pronoun, and, what with adjuncts, subjects, and modifiers, I stand abashed in the presence of a ten-year-old in the primary department of a public school. Our girls might go out as daily governesses at a dollar a day, or run their chances of getting music scholars away from professionals by offering lessons at half price. They are good, intelligent, and industrious. I don’t deny their ability to make a bare living, if forced to do it. I don’t believe they could do more. When the rainy day comes, He who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, must be their helper. Let us hope that day will never dawn. And by way of additional provision against it, I must leave you for an hour or two, to keep an engagement with a client. Don’t let the memory of our talk depress you. We won’t cross the bridge before we come to it. Here is ‘Old Kensington’ to amuse you. You know, darling, that I would work brains and fingers to nothing rather than have you and the lassies want for so much as the ‘latest thing’ in neck ribbons. And so would any man who is worthy of the name.”

“I know you would.”

The elderly love-couple gazed into each other’s eyes, exchanged a good-bye kiss as fondly as at their partings twenty-three years before.

“I could ask no fairer destiny for my daughters than has been mine,” murmured the mother, resettling herself in her luxurious chair before the sea-coal fire, and putting out her hand for the book the thoughtful kindness of her husband had provided for her evening’s entertainment. “But to every prize, there are so many blanks! It is worse for a woman to sell herself for a home and a livelihood than for her to fight, hand-to-hand with poverty, all her life. If girls would only believe this. I mean that mine shall!”

She did not open the book yet. Unrest and dissatisfaction were in the face that studied the seething, glowing pile in the grate.

“There are the Payne girls, for instance!” she said, presently, with increasing discomfort.

The book lay, still shut, in her lap. She folded her hands upon it; lay back in the chair, and did not move again in an hour. She was “thinking it out;” pulling: hard on the oar in the teeth of head-wind and fog.

She was haunted by the Payne girls. Their father, a popular physician, had lived handsomely; worked hard; been exemplary in his home, his profession, in church, and in city. He sent his five daughters to the best schools, and fitted them by culture and dress to make a creditable appearance in the world—the only world they cared for—a round of visits, parties and show-places for marriageable young people of both sexes. They were nice girls, said complaisant Everybody. Not beautiful, or gifted, but sprightly, well-bred and amiable—the very material out of which to make good wives and mothers. Two did marry before the sad day on which their father was brought home in an apoplectic fit, from which he never rallied. They married for love, but not imprudently. Their husbands were merchants with fair prospects, steady, enterprising, moral young men, who were yet not quite disposed to be burdened with the care of a maiden sister-in-law-and-a-half apiece in addition to the support of their families proper. That somebody would have to “look after the unmarried daughters” was soon bruited about. There were two boys—five and ten years old—to be educated; the widow to be provided for, and, when the estate was settled up, nothing except a life-insurance of eighteen thousand dollars was left with which to compass all this. Tenderhearted Everybody was sorry for the fatherless boys; sorrier for the widow, who had loved her husband very truly; sorriest for “the Payne girls.” Before their mourning was rusty, appreciative Everybody began to nudge Everybody Else slyly, when in company with the Payne girls, to call attention to the fact, daily more and more palpable, that the sisters three were anxious to get married. Not more anxious, if the secrets of feminine hearts had been revealed, than were dozens of others in their set, but they had not the art to dissemble their eagerness. Nobody stayed his, or her laugh at them by considering that, since they had deliberately, conscientiously, and humanely determined to relieve their mother from the crushing weight of their dependence, and saw no other way of doing this than by selling themselves in the licensed and respectable shambles of matrimony, they should have been commended for doing with all their might whatsoever their hands found to do. They angled earnestly, but with a zeal so little according to knowledge that the most bull-headed gudgeon in the preserved waters of bachelor and widowerdom scorned to be imposed upon by the bait. They borrowed the finery of their better-off sisters; made their own and their mother’s over and over again; went every where and tried every phase of fascination, “from grave to gay, from lively to severe,” until their eager, ceaseless smiles wore wrinkles about lips and eyes that ill-natured Everybody called crows-feet, and the tales of their fawnings, toadyisms, and manoeuvres were stale in the ears of greedy Everybody—yet were still, at thirty-six, thirty-eight, and forty years of age, the Payne girls, “whose brothers were now able to do something for them.” What more suitable than that these fine young fellows—one of whom had chosen his father’s profession, while the other had gone into partnership with his brother-in-law, should bind pillions upon their backs whereon their sisters could ride in reputable indolence, behind the wives they had wedded and had a right to cherish?

“It was a pity,” considerate Everybody now began to whisper, “that they should be thus hampered; but what else could be done?”

Mrs. Hiller’s fresh-colored, matronly face might well be grave, as she recounted these things to herself, had the history of the Payne girls been an isolated case.

“But they are a type of so many!” she said, sadly. “Society is encrusted with such, like barnacles sticking to a ship. There is Lewis Carter, one of the ablest young lawyers at the bar, Philip says. He and Annie Morton have been in love with one another ever since he was twenty-one, and she nineteen, ten years ago. It is eight since his father died, and left him in charge of his mother and three sisters, only one of whom is younger than himself. They have not married, and, until they do, he cannot. Annie may wait for him until they are both fifty years old and upward—maybe all their lives—for the older the sisters grow, the more dependent they will become. They make a pleasant home for him, people say; manage his money judiciously, and fairly worship their benefactor. Yet he must compare them, mentally, to leeches, when he reflects how youth and hope are ebbing out of his heart and Annie’s. No doubt leeches are sincerely attached to what they feed upon. What right have they to expect a support from him, more than he from them? They are strong and well, and as much money was spent upon their education as upon his. Housekeepers, forsooth! Does it take four women to keep one man’s house?”

She was rowing very hard now, and the fog was denser than ever.

“There is Mr. Sibthorpe, with his four girls and three boys, and a salary, as bank-teller, of two thousand dollars a year. The daughters all ‘took’ French and music lessons at school. One of them is ‘passionately fond’ of worsted work; another does decalcomanie flower-pots and box-covers for fairs, and all crochet in various stitches, and one is great upon tatting. They ‘help about house,’ as our grandmothers used to say, all four of them; do contrive, with the aid of their mother and a strapping Irish girl, to keep the housework tolerably in hand, and ‘have in’ a dressmaker and seamstress, spring and fall, to give them a fresh start. They don’t read a book through once a year; they have no connected plans about anything, except to appear as well as girls whose fathers are worth ten times as much as is theirs—and to get married! They murder time by inches while waiting for the four coming men; mince it into worthlessness with their pitiful fal-lals of fancy work and the fine arts (save the mark!). Evelyn told me, the other day, that the sprig of wax hyacinths she showed me—a stiff, tasteless spike, that smelled of oil and turpentine—‘occupied’ her for ten hours! What will become of them when their pale, overworked father dies? It is frightful to think of a vessel thus freighted and cumbered being tied to safety by such a worn, frayed cord as that one man’s life.”

A dash of sleety rain against the window interrupted her.

“Philip said there would be a storm before morning. I wonder if he took his umbrella? He never thinks of himself. I am sorry he had to go out at all with such a cold.”

“One man’s life!” What flung the words back at her? What had she and her petted daughters between them and comparative—maybe absolute—poverty, save the life of this man, who, with a heavy cold on his lungs, had gone out into the fierce March night? Who would dare prophesy that his dream of amassing a competency for his children would be fulfilled? Why should she be vexing her soul with speculations about the Payne, and the Carter, and the Sibthorpe girls, when other women, as wise and far-sighted as she, were perhaps asking aloud, in friendly or impertinent gossip over their respective firesides, what would become of the “poor Hillers,” in the event of their father’s death.

She felt very much as if her barque had, like Robinson Crusoe’s ship,

What were her daughters good for, if the question should arise how to keep the wolf from their own door? There was Philip’s life-insurance (everybody insured his life nowadays) of fifteen thousand dollars, secured to herself; and this house in which they lived, the lowest valuation of which was twenty thousand—and something—she wasn’t sure how much besides. That is, she supposed something would be left when all outstanding accounts were paid. Say, however, that they would have thirty-five thousand clear. At six per cent. interest, this would bring, she estimated, after a pause, an income of twenty-one hundred dollars per annum. Provided she sold the house! That was a pang, even in imagination. Out of this sum must come rent, fuel, clothes, and a thousand etceteras for a family of four grown people, whose present income was, at the least, ten thousand a year.

“Good Heavens!” The rosy face blanched even under the ruddy rays of the sea-coal fire. “Say, then, that we were worth fifty thousand dollars, free of incumbrance. That would be only three thousand a year; and, as Philip says, we could do nothing to increase the principal. Why we would have to be economical, if we had double that sum. And few men’s estates yield more. How do widows and orphans who have been reared in luxury, live, when the strong staff is broken? I seem never to have understood until this instant what helpless wretches women are; how most helpless of all classes are those who know themselves, and who have always been known as ladies, born and bred. Is there a remedy, a preventive for this? Is it impracticable to throw out an anchor to windward? What was the origin of this insane, wicked, cruel prejudice against independent thought and vigorous work on the part of women, that fills every rank of life with miserable wives, and mothers who ought never to be entrusted with the care of children? Does He, who can make even wickedness the instrument of His purposes, permit this to flourish rank in Christian lands, that the world may be lawfully populated?”

In the boat again, and in very deep, murky waters, but tugging at the oar with all the energy of her practical, common-sensible character.

“Philip says teaching does not pay any longer; nor painting, nor music, nor fine sewing. What does?”

Through the smooth, oily heart of the big lump of coal on the top of the mass in the grate, placed there carefully by Mr. Hiller’s tongs before he went out, ran a concealed layer of slate, not wider than a man’s finger, nor thicker than a plate of mica. But when the fire touched it, it cracked, and the big, justly-balanced lump exploded with force that sent the fragments helter-skelter in every direction.

Mrs. Hiller jumped up with a little scream, and shook her dress violently, inspected every flounce, lest the flutings might harbor a live coal or spark.

“All safe, fortunately,” she congratulated herself, after brushing off rug and fender, and pushing her chair a few paces further from the hearth. “It is a real calamity to scorch a dress in this day, when one pays so much for having it made. Our bills are absolutely shameful. Whoever loses money, or fails to make it, the milliners and dressmakers ought to be fat and flourishing. Their profits must be enormous, yet all of them—the competent and obliging ones—are overrun with work. Madame Champe, for example, gives herself the airs of a queen dispensing favors, when she consents to undertake a dress for me.”

At that instant, with that tart speech, Mrs. Hiller reached land and beached her boat.

The three girls did not return home from the party to which they had gone until twelve o’clock. The rain had not touched them in the close coach their father always hired for them on such occasions. Tossing off their wrappings as they ran, they trooped into their mother’s sitting-room, adjoining her chamber, where she awaited them.

“With such a superlugious home-sy fire! bright and warm as her own heart,” chattered Blanche, the youngest, rushing forward to throw herself on the rug at her mother’s knee. “And a heavenly cup of tea! I enter now into the full comprehension of the reason why it is called the celestial herb,” sniffing the air. “There never was, there never will be, there never could be, such another mamma.”

“You are right there!” cried the others, kissing her less noisily, but as fondly, as did the madcap of the flock.

Any mother might be proud of the trio, clustered about her, sipping the tea they declared to be more delicious than all the delicacies of the supper table; talking as fast as their nimble tongues could move of what they had done, and seen, and heard, since she had superintended their toilets, four hours before. That the understanding between her and them was perfect, hearty, and joyous, was plain.

Emma, the eldest, was twenty-one, tall, shapely, with a complexion and gait that bespoke healthy nervous organization, a sound mind and judgment. Her excellent sense and happy temper made her a safe counsellor, as well as agreeable companion, for her more volatile sisters. She dressed tastefully, as did they all; moved with composed grace through a systematic round of daily duties; was her father’s pride, the mother’s helper, and not a whit less popular in her circle than if she had been both wit and beauty, whereas she was neither.

Imogen was far handsomer, a decided blonde, while Emma had gray eyes and dark hair. The second daughter liked to set off her fairness by all justifiable and lady-like appliances of art and fashion, and knew how to do it. She was never florid or conspicuous in appearance, yet never en dÉshabille in the simplest attire. Her clothes became a part of her so soon as she put them on. A few touches of her deft fingers brought fitness out of disorder; added the nameless, inestimable air we term “style,” for the want of a fitter word, to whatever she touched or wore. A very busy bee she was in her way, with a mania for renovating her own paraphernalia and that of everybody else who would allow her the privilege; giving to the parlors, which were her especial charge, a new aspect every day by the variety of her elegant devices.

Blanche—eighteen and just “out,” was petite in figure, with light, fluffy hair, dancing blue eyes and small white teeth that somehow made more arch her merry smile. She was the pet and the mischief-maker of the household, affectionate and frolicsome, with innumerable tricksy, yet dainty ways that belonged only to herself; quick of wit and fearless of tongue, and facile in hand as Imogen, her room-mate and confederate in all her schemes of pleasure or work.

“Emma lays the foundation; Imogen builds thereupon. Mine is the ornamental department—the glossing over and decking, after the scaffold is down,” she had once said.

The mother recalled it, now, watching them as with unsealed eyes, and was confirmed in the resolutions which were the fruit of her evening’s musings.

“Away to bed, magpies!” she said, at length, “I won’t hear a word more! You are warmed and refreshed now. And unless you go soon, you will not be down in season to recount your adventures and conquests to papa at breakfast. He considers himself an ill-used person when he has to go off without getting the evening’s report. Moreover, I want you to have your brains steady and clear, for I must have a long business talk with you to-morrow forenoon.”

“Business! that sounds portentous,” said Imogen, in affected consternation.

“It sounds entrancing!” commented Blanche. “It savoreth of new dresses, and, perchance, jewelry—peradventure, though that is a bold flight of fancy, of a trip across the sea next summer.”

“Nothing has gone wrong, I hope, mother?” queried Emma.

“Nothing at all, my dear Lady Thoughtful,” was the smiling reply.

“Dear Lady Owl, you mean!” cried saucy Blanche, and she went off singing:—

“Happy children!” Mrs. Hiller heaved a confidential sigh to the fire that had shone on the young faces a moment ago. “Will what I have to tell them make them less happy or gay? Is mine, after all, the needless croak of the owl instead of a wise warning?”

The thought pierced her again, next day, when they met in her boudoir, eager and curious, their eyes and cheeks unmarred by the moderate dissipation of the preceding night. But she stood fast to her purpose; unfolded her scheme in bulk and detail, with the assured tone of one who had considered the cost to the last farthing. She was not accounted an eccentric woman by her acquaintances, but her proposal was novel, and, to her listeners, startling. Their days of school-study were over, she reminded them. It was time that upon the foundation of general information thus laid should be erected the superstructure of a profession.

“A specialty, if you prefer the word,” she said; “since I earnestly hope you will not be called upon to practice it for a livelihood. While papa’s strength and health last, he finds no more delightful use for his earnings than to purchase comfort and luxury for us. Were he to die, or to be unfortunate in business, or become incurably diseased—and such things are of almost daily occurrence—our style of living would be at once and entirely altered. You would be driven to the study of small, minute economies and false appearances, such as must rasp and narrow the souls of those who resort to them; to escape these by a marriage of convenience, or the lucky accident of a love-match, or to engage, in earnest, in some business that would, thanks to your previous training, continue to you the elegancies, with the decencies of life.”

This was the preamble to an abstract of the conversation with her husband, the troubled reverie and calculations that succeeded it.

“Of artists in music and painting, there are, perhaps, twenty in this city,” she observed. “Of pretenders and drudges in these arts, there are more than a thousand. Since not one of you has developed any decided talent for such pursuits, or for literature, and, since teaching for a living has become but another name for bondage and starvation, my plan is this: You, Emma, shall learn bookkeeping; Imogen, dressmaking; Blanche, millinery. Don’t look horrified! I shall not expose you to the uncongenial associations or unwholesome atmosphere of the crowded shop or work-room. All that affection and money can do to make the term of your novitiate pleasant shall be done. You shall fit up the old nursery as your academy of the useful arts, if you choose to call it by so dignified a name. I shall engage competent instructors for you and pay well for the lessons. But there must be no play-work, no superficial, amateur performance on either side. When your trades are learned, I shall expect you to keep yourselves in practice, and up with the latest improvements and fashions by practice in domestic manufactures. Milliners’ and dressmakers’ bills shall be among the things that were. Emma shall have charge of the housekeeping accounts and papa’s books. He will pay her as he would any other skilful accountant, and what you, Imogen and Blanche, shall adjudge to be a reasonable price for every dress and bonnet made for yourselves, your sister, or for me.”

The, for once, dumb trio found simultaneous voice at this.

“Mamma! would that be right? Would it not be an imposition?”

“It is his own proposal. We talked it all over last night after he came home, and again this morning. I need not tell you that he is the best, most indulgent father that ever loved and spoiled three loving daughters. I had some difficulty in persuading him to let me try the experiment. The tears stood in his dear eyes, while he debated the pros and cons of the case.

“‘My bonnie bairns!’ he said. ‘If I could, I would be their shield always. They should never dream of privation; never ink or prick their pretty fingers except for amusement, if I were sure of ten years more of life and prosperity.’”

She stopped to steady her voice.

Imogen was crying outright; Emma’s gray eyes were cloudy. Blanche broke forth, half-laughing, half-sobbing:—

“The angelic old papa! isn’t he a born seraph? I would peddle rags with a lean mule, and a string of bells across the cart, to save him an hour’s anxiety. I wish he would wear French hats—all flowers and moonshine! And have four every season. Would not I furnish them for nothing, kisses thrown into the bargain?”

The others had to laugh at the vision of papa’s six feet of stature, broad shoulders, strong features, and iron-gray hair crowned with a fancy hat of the prevailing mode. Mrs. Hiller went on:—

“‘But,’ he added, ‘I will not, while I can take care of them, derive one cent’s profit from their work. There is no surer way of learning how to take care of money than having money to manage. I will furnish each of the pusses with a bank-book. She shall make out quarterly bills against you, or me; deposit her gains in her own name, and invest as she will. Her earnings may thus be the nest-egg of a neat little fortune. I can’t imagine—I won’t believe that they will ever become mercenary. But I am sick of the limpness and insipidity and general know-nothingness of the women with whom I have business dealings. ‘My dear husband never suffered me to be annoyed by these matters,’ says the widow, her handkerchief to her eyes. And—‘If my poor papa had foreseen this day, it would have embittered his life!’ sobs the interesting spinster of forty-seven, who ‘hasn’t an idea how to make out a checque,’ and really doesn’t know the difference between real and personal estate!”

“The Payne girls!” uttered Imogen and Blanche, in wicked glee. “Mamma, you ‘did’ Arethusa to the life.”

She resumed more seriously. “Something papa heard last night caused us to lay this subject especially to heart. Doctor Jaynes says there is no doubt that Mr. Sibthorpe is threatened with softening of the brain. He has been doing extra work this winter—bookkeeping and copying in the evenings, at home, as he could pick up such jobs, to eke out his salary, and it has been too much for him. Nothing but absolute rest and freedom from care can save him. Doctor Jaynes told him so plainly, and he answered, with tears, that it was out of the question—he must die in harness. It was natural that the news should interest and sadden us.”

“He has a very helpless family,” remarked Emma, compassionately.

“Because so many of them—all who are grown up—are girls!” cried Blanche, impetuously. “That tells the whole story. And such a pitiful, disgraceful, humiliating one it is! I could be ashamed of being a woman. Mrs. Sibthorpe—indeed a majority of American mothers of the genteeler sort, ought to turn pagans, and drown their baby-girls as soon as they are born. That would be better than turning them loose—great, overgrown babies, forever whining, with their fingers in their mouths, over their feebleness, and timidity, and sentimental ignorance—upon a grinning, or groaning public!”

“But how strange that we have never taken this subject into serious consideration before,” said sensible Emma. “That other people do not, is certain. Mother, you won’t mind if I ask you a question or two?”

“My precious child! as many as you like. I wish you to state every objection frankly. You are of age, you know. I could not compel you to adopt my suggestion, if I were disposed to do so. Nor will I coerce the judgment of one of you three. We must go into this enterprise heartily and all together, or not at all.”

“Will not our action excite much talk when it is known, give rise to unpleasant surmises, and subject us to many impertinent inquiries?”

“Undoubtedly it will. We may as well prepare ourselves for this. And the same kind guardians of their neighbors’ behavior and general interests would buzz and sting yet more industriously were one of us to sicken with small-pox, or the house to burn down to-morrow. Or, if papa were to go off in a rapid consumption, they would bewail the number of girls in our family as loudly and as delightedly as they will soon be gossiping about poor, distraught Mr. Sibthorpe, and his quartette of what Blanche calls overgrown babies; would dole out to us such charity of word and deed as falls to the share of the Payne girls. My darlings, if I could tell you how I long to see you independent of such changes in fortune and fair-weather friends! each of you armed in herself to meet reverses and to defy them, with God’s help and blessing upon those who are trying to help themselves!”

Whatever error the tender mother may have made in her calculations of what was to be risked, gained, and lost by the bold step she purposed, she had not overrated the amount and quality of gossip caused by the practical operation of her scheme. Stories, having “Mrs. Hiller’s queer whim” for a starting-point, increased and multiplied, and flew over the town like thistle-down in a windy September day. The mother was a tyrant; the daughters were peculiar and strong-minded. The parents refused to maintain their offspring because they were not sons, and had informed them of their intention to bequeath every dollar of their property to a Boys’ Orphan Asylum. The offspring disdained to be fed and clothed by the hated parents. Mr. Hiller was insolvent; Mrs. Hiller was insane; both were misers. The sisters were engaged to be married to missionaries, and were bent upon engrafting the multifarious iniquities of the modern and Christian woman’s garb upon the scantily-clothed trunk of Ashantee, or Papuyan, or Root-digger fashions.

At first our heroines were annoyed, then diverted. In less than three months they ceased to think of the babble at all, in their growing interest in their active, varied home-life.

Just a year from the March night on which Mrs. Hiller had used so many nautical figures in her speech and reverie, two cards were brought up to the “academy of useful arts,” as the fair students therein persisted in calling a large room at the back of the house. It was airy and sunny, and, to-day, was full of life and enjoyment, for mother and daughters were gathered there, and the chirping was like that of a happily-crowded robin’s nest.

“The ladies say, do let ’em run right up, without ceremony,” reported the servant.

“‘Arethusa Payne,’ and ‘Marietta Sibthorpe,’” read Blanche from the cards. “Ask them to walk up to the work-room, Jane. Mind that you say ‘the work-room.’” As the amused girl left the chamber, the young lady continued: “An Inspection Committee! Let them come! Won’t I make them open their eyes, though?”

“I had no idea you were engaged with a dressmaker. I am afraid we intrude,” simpered Miss Payne, tiptoeing, like a cautious hen, between Blanche’s work-stand, piled with bonnet frames and linings, and Imogen’s, down which flowed a river of silken flounces, half gathered at the top; noting likewise, by turning her sharp face to the right, then the left, as she stepped (still like an inquisitive Partlet), that Emma’s tall desk, with a ledger open upon it, was in a corner.

Mrs. Hiller was ripping up a black silk dress; Emma was pulling a velvet hat to pieces.

“Only practising our trades a little in furbishing up things; giving a spring-ish look to hats and gowns,” rejoined Blanche, with saucy politeness. “One gets so sick of winter clothes!”

“Dear me, how convenient! What a source of amusement it must be to have that sort of knack!” said Miss Sibthorpe, self-compassionately. “It is a genuine talent, isn’t it now? downright genius! And can you actually make a hat, Blanche! I couldn’t put a bit of ribbon on mine to save my life!”

“But we are professionals,” put in Imogen. “You have no idea how we have worked to acquire the artistic touch. We had Miss Tiptop’s forewoman with us at the country cottage we rented last summer, all the ‘dull season,’ on purpose to teach me dressmaking, besides the lessons I had had in town. Blanche ran down to the city every week for an all-day lesson.”

“But how very odd!” ejaculated Arethusa.

“That people should pay such exorbitant milliners’ bills all their lives, when they could learn the business with one-fourth the labor and in one-tenth of the time music requires?” Blanche said, in wilful misunderstanding, setting her head on one side, and holding her unfinished hat off at arm’s length to examine the effect. “It is queer, as you say. I’ll be generous, girls. I’ll give you instructions, if you wish—take you as my apprentices. I should enjoy it hugely.”

Both laughed shrilly and affectedly, to disguise the offence her proposal gave them.

“I haven’t the least taste for such employment,” said Arethusa.

“You are very kind, but my social engagements are so numerous!” pleaded Marietta. “Honestly, what do you do it for? You can’t really like it! It seems so—so—very peculiar! such a queer whim, you know!”

“That is just what everybody says—such a queer whim! You get so much talked about, you know,” subjoined Arethusa. “And it is so excessively disagreeable to be talked about! I couldn’t stand it.”

“But you do not understand,” pursued Blanche, solemnly, “that you might make a living by it. Why, we three expect to be a rich firm in the course of time; to buy up bank stock and railway shares, and speculate in real estate, and all that. Emma is a capital book-keeper. Papa says she could command a salary of a thousand dollars a year already. Then, think of the luxury of having a new dress, or, what is the same thing, one that is made over to look like new, at every party; and as many hats a season as you want, for what it would cost to buy one at Madame Lavigne’s. And finally, you see, one respects herself so thoroughly and deliciously for being able to fill up a real place—a worker’s place—in the world. Most women remind me of marbles that have rolled somehow into holes. Sometimes it is a fit. But as often as not the marble is round, and the hole is square!”

PART II.

“All aboard!”

As the cars glided out of the lighted depot into the darker streets, leading to the utter gloom of the open country, two gentlemen settled themselves into their seats with audible sighs of satisfaction.

“Homeward bound!” said the elder, a man of fifty, hale in figure and face, although his hair was almost white.

“For which let us be thankful!” responded his companion, heartily. “This has been a long week to me, although a busy one—longer than a fortnight would have been at home.”

“You may blame the twin babies for that,” said the other, smiling indulgently at his impatience.

“Bless them for it, you mean—the boys and their mother. A man may well be impatient to get back to such treasures as are mine.”

He was a fine-looking fellow, manly in every gesture and tone, six-and-twenty years old, the son-in-law of the gentleman beside him, and had been for a year his law-partner.

“You are right. Emma is a good girl—a noble woman; her mother’s own daughter for sense, discretion, and warmth of heart. There is nothing frivolous or shallow about her. Let me see—the boys are almost three months old, are they not?”

“Just three months to-morrow. It is marvellous what strength the thought of them puts into my heart and arm. The cunning little rascals! Emma writes that they grow every day. She is sure they will recognize me on my return. I suppose you experienced papas, who have outlived the novelty of this sort of thing, amuse yourselves vastly at our expense; but it pleases me to believe what she says. They are very bright, healthy in mind and body, as the children of such a mother should be. They and I are blest beyond comparison in having her for the angel in our house. Should it please God to spare our lives”—

The sentence rested on the shocked air, incomplete, never to be finished. One terrific jar!—a crashing and splintering, and reeling, an awful sense of falling down, down, through utter darkness, over and over, then a blow that ended everything—surprise, consternation, fearful questioning—in blank, black silence.

When the dÉbris of the telescoped cars was cleared away, the two men were found lying, as they had sat, side by side. The younger was dead. The elder moved and groaned as he was lifted from the wreck. Papers upon their persons established their identity beyond a doubt.

Early next morning a telegram was brought into a pretty dressing-room, where the sunshine, peering through the vine-leaves about the window, made dancing shadows on the floor, laughed, and leaped, and flashed in reflection from the water in a China bath, set in the middle of the chamber. In this splashed and crowed two baby-boys, one held by the mother, the other by the grandmother, and between these knelt two younger women—all four in delighted worship of the tiny cherubs. There was a breathless hush as the youngest of the party sprang up to seize the envelope, and tore it open.

“Collision!” said the missive. “Frederick Corwin killed instantly. Philip Hiller badly injured. Both will be sent on in next train.”

In this ghastly shape came disaster to the long-exempt household. Life and the world had dealt so benignly and bountifully with them heretofore, that they had insensibly learned to look upon their possession of health, love, and happiness as assured for years and years to come. Emma’s marriage had removed her from them but a couple of blocks, and all concurred in the opinion that this was a charming variety upon their former estate.

“How did we ever get along without Fred’s and Emma’s house to run into? It is as good as having two homes,” the girls often said among themselves.

When the twins came—bouncing, healthy boys—the excitement and joy in one house equalled that in the other. It seemed now, indeed, that they could ask nothing more of Heaven; that the brimming cup of bliss was mantled all over with rose-leaves. And when “Papa and Fred” were obliged to be absent from their homes for a week, in attendance upon the doings of a court a hundred miles away, Emma and her babes were transferred with much ceremony and rejoicing to her mother’s care; given up to the petting and admiration of the doating aunties without reservation, beyond Fred’s earnest entreaty that they would not kiss the boys away to skeletons before he returned, and a threat to have them protected by copper sheathing from the fate of St. Peter’s brazen toe.

Dear Fred! the merry, handsome, stalwart brother; their only one,—who was never to jest with them again; never again to hold wife and babes in his embrace. Imogen and Blanche mourned for him only less passionately than did she who had proudly and gladly borne his name. Poor wife! she was denied the satisfaction of hearing that her name had been the last in his thoughts and speech; that the loyal heart had never beat more lovingly for her than in its latest throbbings; for weeks passed before Mr. Hiller could speak at all, and then the disjointed utterances of the palsied tongue told nothing beyond the terrible fact that the brain had sustained serious, it might be irreparable, damage. A paralytic cripple he would remain until the day of his death, although this half-life might be prolonged for years, pronounced the best medical authorities in the land, summoned without regard to distance or expense, by the agonized wife.

Stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted, the four women sat them down together in the mother’s room, a month after the double bereavement, and took mournful but deliberate counsel together. Their affairs were not at a desperate pass, as they already knew. There was the house in which they lived, free of mortgage, which would bring at least thirty thousand dollars in the market; ten thousand dollars in bank stocks and other securities—solid, paying investments, and five thousand dollars’ worth of real estate—chiefly unimproved lots in a growing part of the city, that might be very valuable in time, if they could be held and the taxes paid. Fred had invested four thousand dollars in the latter kind of property, and his life was insured for ten thousand more. If Emma were to sell everything—furniture, lots and all—she would have just seventeen thousand dollars with which to support herself, to rear and educate her boys. By living upon the interest of the life-insurance fund, and paying taxes on the real-estate for some years, she might double the little fortune bequeathed to her, without reserve, by her husband’s will.

“I shall not touch a cent of it, if I can help it,” she said, in sad decision. “It shall be the father’s provision for his sons. They will need it all, in order to educate themselves as he would have wished. For the present I shall work for them and myself. You foresaw this years ago, mother. I thank God, and thank you, that you prepared us to meet it!”

“Amen!” said her sisters fervently. “Dark as is the day—so much darker than we ever dreamed it would be,” added Imogen, tearfully, yet trying to smile, “we have much to be thankful for. We are strong; we know how to work; and there are papa and the babies, darling Fred’s sons, to work for.”

“Papa and the babies!” Even the fond wife did not resent the classification. The hale gentleman whose half-century of honest, temperate life had not bowed his head or dimmed his eye; the sage, shrewd man of business, than whom none were more respected by his fellow-citizens, was a tremulous, timid child, who wept if his meals were delayed one minute, or his wife, his faithful, tender nurse, were out of his sight for an hour.

“Utterly incapable of attending to the simplest matters connected with his business!” cried open-eyed Everybody, hovering, harpy-like, about the human wreck. “Why, he couldn’t count one hundred to save his life. Of course, they will get a certificate of lunacy from the court, and sell the house, lots, and whatever they can realize anything upon; put all they have together, and live as prudently as possible. The girls ought to marry before long. They are pretty and popular, in spite of their little eccentricities. It isn’t to be expected that they will make brilliant matches now, of course; but they must bring down their ambition to a reasonable level. Beggars mustn’t be choosers. It is unfortunate that poor Mrs. Corwin has those two children. But they may not live. Twins are more likely to die than other babies. And, if they should be taken, she’ll be likely to pick up another husband. Her little property would be a consideration to some men.”

Even the true friends of the sorely-tried family wished sincerely and aloud that “each of the dear girls had a husband to take care of her;” recommended them warmly to the compassionate and favorable notice of their bachelor acquaintances, and devised pious plans of matchmaking for their relief from the inconveniences of their altered circumstances.

“The worst part of it all was that poor Emma was encumbered with the children, who would be more and more expensive every year, and that poor, dear Mr. Hiller would be a helpless imbecile all his life. And what a mistake in them to refuse to treat him as such, and have him examined by a commission who would give his family the right to dispose of his property!”

If the Ruler of the intellects and lives of men had hearkened to these benevolent economists, the crippled man and the brace of “unfortunate” infants would have been taken speedily and comfortably out of this present evil world.

“Thank heaven for the babies!” uttered Blanche, throwing her arms about Emma’s waist. “You darling sister! I bless you for them every hour. What should we have done through all these last fearful weeks without them—and you? Touch their weeny teenty patrimony! Indeed you shall not! And more than that, we’ll make it a big one by the time they are ready to enter college.”

The mother, as chief counsellor, had her plan ready for their consideration. The house—a large double one—was still to be occupied by them. The front parlor was to be used for the millinery department, and put entirely under Blanche’s care. In the back, Imogen would hold sway; and a smaller apartment in the rear of the hall should be the fitting and trying-on chamber. The library across the hall, adjoining the dining-room, was to be the family parlor. In every other part of the house things were to remain unchanged.

“Who deserves to live more comfortably and luxuriously, to rest in soft chairs and sleep upon elastic mattresses, to have generous food served elegantly to tempt the appetite and strengthen the body, than she who purchases all these with her own toil?” said the strange logician whose daughters were too used to her “queer notions” to be startled by them. “I do not say that you will make money fast, or at once. I do contend that, saving rent, bookkeeper’s and saleswoman’s wages, as you will do, you ought to be able to clear your business and personal expenses the first year—if nothing more.”

“If the customers come,” suggested Emma.

Mrs. Hiller nodded confidently. “They will come! In the beginning, out of curiosity and the love of novelty. It will depend upon your skill whether they continue their custom.”

All previous sensations respecting the Hillers—their odd fancies and daring talk and levelling theories; Emma’s marriage and the birth of her twins; the tragical death of her husband and Mr. Hiller’s deplorable condition—faded into the realms of forgottenness before that excited by the appearance in all the leading papers, the following month, of an advertisement to the effect that the “Misses Hiller would open on Tuesday, the 15th instant, at their father’s residence on Lofty Avenue, a first-class millinery and dressmaking establishment, and pledged themselves to use their best efforts to give satisfaction to their customers.”

The sudden intrusion of a bee-moth into a well-regulated, honey-lined hive might create such commotion among the inhabitants thereof as prevailed in the “best circles” of the city when the Incredible was, at length, developed by means of printer’s ink and paper, into the Certain. The Hiller philosophy had wrought its legitimate fruits, said the wise ones. Such sympathy with the lower classes, and familiarity with their modes of thought and personal history, amounting to fanatical imitation of their language and habits and mercenary views of life; such bold scoffing at the ethics and usages of SOCIETY (this in capitals half an inch long, if you please, Mr. Printer!) could have but one sequel, and that a catastrophe.

“Be it so!” enunciated resigned Everybody, in the calm of sinless despair. “Since the Hiller girls prefer to sink to the level of mere working women; to fly in the face of Providence that would, if they were more reasonable and less sentimental, endow them with property to the amount of at least fifty thousand dollars—sixty thousand, if poor Mrs. Corwin’s be included, with the certain prospect of fifteen thousand more at poor Mr. Hiller’s death—if they prefer, instead of taking the goods thus offered them and living like ladies in the sphere to which they were born, faithful to the principles that control refined SOCIETY—to delve and plan and accumulate, let them be recognized forthwith as laborers—nothing more, and nothing less! We, the loyal leaguers of SOCIETY, true to the traditions of our class and age, cannot more effectually and dignifiedly exclude them from our sacred circle than by patronizing and paying them as dressmakers and milliners. They have exquisite taste. That we, being candid even where our enemies are concerned, will admit. They have also, tact and energy, and association with US in the past has given them just ideas of our style and needs. While we do not budge an inch from our belief and precept that they should have starved genteelly; lived on bread and tea, dyed and turned and otherwise rejuvenated their friends’ cast-off dresses; shivered over pinched-in grates in winter and sponged upon obliging acquaintances in summer—sooner than thus degrade themselves and betray their caste for the sake of pampering their flesh with the delicacies of the markets, and their pride by indulging in purple and fine linen, in damask and cut-glass, in Brussels and satin—we”—concluded breathless Everybody, “accept the situation as they have set it before us.”

“But it is suicidal!” actually sobbed the well-wishers of the recalcitrant trio. “They will never marry well now!”

“Tuesday the 15th inst.” arrived—sharp but clear November weather, and the desecrated Hiller mansion wore its most cheerful aspect. In the back parlor the decks had been cleared for action, as Imogen phrased it, by removing the piano, a large sofa, and an inlaid stand or two. Imogen’s sewing machine and chair were by the side window. Before the embayed recess at the end of the room was a long, rather narrow table of singular construction, the plan being her own. The top was covered with enamelled leather, with morocco pouches at each corner, rather larger than the pockets of a billiard-table, and deep drawers underneath. A tape-measure and a case of scissors lay upon this. The pictures on the walls; the carpets; the rich hangings of the windows; the lounging-chairs set invitingly about, the easel, with its collection of fine engravings in one corner, a chiffonier loaded with attractive articles of virtu, and a few fresh, attractive books—even the stand of flowers in the bay-window were the same that had so often challenged the admiration of Mrs. Hiller’s guests, as giving her parlors “such an air of home-like elegance.”

In Blanche’s realm there had been more and material alterations. In the niches on each side of the mantel were tall, shallow cases, with sliding glass doors. These were made of black walnut, and bright silver-plated knobs and pegs set in the back. Beneath the doors were drawers with handles of the same metal. An attractive array of bonnets and hats hung in one case; of caps, and headdresses and wreaths, bouquets, sprays of flowers in the other, these last apparently springing from a box filled with moss set in the bottom. Opposite the mock conservatory was a show-case, being a walnut table handsomely carved, with a glass box on top containing ribbons arranged with a nice regard to harmony and contrasts of colors and shades. This also had drawers beneath with silver knobs. At one of the front windows stood Blanche’s chair and wicker-work stand. Hanging-baskets of living flowers swung between the curtains; a mocking-bird’s cage in the arch dividing the rooms.

Emma was walking slowly up and down the length of the two apartments, ready to retire, at the approach of customers, to her desk in the fitting-room. Her sisters had insisted upon her right to seclude herself from general observation.

“We don’t mind being made a show of! In fact, we rather like it!” the irrepressible Blanche was saying. “But they sha’n’t come to stare at, and whisper about you, Queenie!”

Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks were red as the French poppies in the glass case near by. Every crimp in her blonde hair seemed to stir in the breeze of excitement that swept and swayed her merry spirit. She flitted about from Imogen’s dominion to her own, altering, admiring, exclaiming, like a restless humming-bird.

“I am sorry for you, too,” she ran on, “for I anticipate great fun during the next few weeks. All the calls to-day that are not prompted by curiosity, more or less ill-natured, will be of condolence. Don’t I know how our dear friends will pull out eye-glass and handkerchief in the same tug. ‘You poor, dear girls!’ Mrs. Smith will sniff. (No matter what happens to you, whether you lose a front tooth, or your fortune, or your life, your best wishers will call you ‘poor dear!‘) ‘Now do you think—honestly, now, you know—that it was really necessary for Philip Hiller’s daughters to take this unprecedented step?’”

“Miss Allfriend will kiss us all around, and drop a tear on each of our noses, with—‘My dear children! it makes my heart bleed! And how does mamma stand it?’ And Mrs. Williams will trot in, eye-glass up—‘Bless me! bless me! I thought I should drop when I read it in the papers! Such a shock! You can’t really conceive! Bromide and red lavender all night, my dears! I assure you!’”

“Hold your saucy tongue!” laughed Imogen, in spite of herself, and even Emma smiled at the spirited mimicry.

Blanche rattled away faster than ever. “I am going to be prim and proper when they begin to come! One and all will criticise our appointments as ‘shockingly extravagant;’ declare that ‘the like was never seen before in store or work-room—quite out of keeping, you know!’ and prophesy swift ruin if we keep on as we have begun. And we won’t hint that we paid for everything, our very own selves, with the money papa has forced upon us for the work we have done in the last four years. It’s none of their business! nor that we have some left, to repair losses, should we have any!”

“Dear papa! all we can do won’t bring back health and reason to him!” sighed Emma. “Or life to”—

Her eyes filled suddenly, and she would have hastened from the room, but Imogen caught her in her arms.

“For their sakes—those who loved and believed in us—and for the babies; we will acquit ourselves bravely, sister. There are times when work that we must do—systematic and sustained effort for others, is God’s best cure for soul-morbidness. I know!”

The others exchanged a silent look over the bright head bowed on Emma’s shoulder—a glance of blended pity and indignation. Then, Blanche pulled back the glass door of her flower-case with needless rattle, and busied herself with a pendant of glossy ivy.

“Another year I will devise some such plan as this for showing off my feathers—something like an aviary—see if I don’t!”

Not one of the three ever referred, in so many words, to the fact that handsome, accomplished Harding Walford had not entered the house in more than a month; that his visits had slackened perceptibly in frequency and length since it became generally known that Mr. Hiller would never recover. He had been Imogen’s most devoted attendant for almost a year. Her family had not doubted what would be her answer to the declaration they saw was pending. The world reported that he had broken a positive engagement, and ran no risk in so doing, since she had neither father nor brother to defend her rights. But there was not, on this account, meted out to him a formidable share of censure. He was “the best judge of his own affairs.” He was not rich. Had he been, he might still, with reason, hesitate to take a step that would entail upon him such a weight of responsibility as would a connection with the no longer prosperous Hillers, even had not Imogen’s eccentric conduct of late, in banding with her sisters “to undermine the distinctions of SOCIETY,” been ample excuse for his defection. He was wise in his generation, and the applause showered upon him who doeth good unto himself, was his due. SOCIETY always pays this sort of debt.

Only—Imogen had believed in him; and the shivering of her trust beyond the hope of repair, was very hard to bear. So much more cruel than the thought of being the target of gossip’s shafts, that the latter rattled unheeded against her armor of proud rectitude that day, and ever afterward. Desertion had stung its worst when the man she loved had looked for the last time, with love-full eyes, into hers.

Customers did come; singly, in twos and threes, and, a little past midday, when they had discussed the Hillers’ affairs comfortably over their luncheon-tables, in droves. They gathered in the spacious rooms, as Mrs. Hiller had predicted, not so much to buy or order, as to criticise and wonder. The most comic part of the exhibition to fun-loving, dauntless Blanche was that so many were disconcerted at finding that they were not singular in their curiosity and the resolve to gratify it. Hardly second to this was the ludicrous uncertainty on the part of most of the visitors as to the proper line of conduct to be pursued in greeting the gentlewomen so abruptly transformed into trades-people whom they were here to scrutinize. That the cordial yet respectful familiarity of equals was not to be thought of, now, was the dominant impression with the majority. Yet few were so indurated in worldliness, or so barefaced in the display of it as to attempt to treat their late social compeers exactly as they would “quite common persons.” The result was a combination of stiffness and patronage totally at variance with the carriage of well-bred ease, flavored with hauteur, they adjudged to be “the thing in the circumstances.”

The proprietors of the elegant apartments were mistresses of themselves and the position from the beginning. With a single eye to business, they adroitly evaded all allusion to the novelty of the scene; received the compliments to their establishments and their wares with smiling composure; showed the stock and took orders with professional dexterity, and entirely ignored glances and veiled hints of commiseration.

“Have you no assistants?” queried more than one.

“At present, none,” Imogen returned, quietly. “Should our business require it, we shall procure help, keeping everything, of course, under our own personal supervision.”

“It is not an untried field to us, you know,” subjoined Blanche, in her blithest tone. “Much practice has taught us swiftness and the artistic sleight of hand that distinguishes the work of the modiste from that of the amateur.”

The rooms were quite full when a plain but handsome carriage stopped at the door. A lady alighted with her arms full of bundles, followed by two slender girls of eighteen and twenty, each with a parcel, although the footman stood idly by, holding the door.

“Just like her!” murmured a spectator inside the front window, peeping through the lace curtains. “She prides herself on her want of what she calls false shame, and on being able to wait on herself.”

A hum ran from the tattler through the little assembly. Blanche, who was showing a box of feathers to a customer, feigned not to hear it; dared not to steal a look at her sister, although she longed to know how she comported herself in view of the approaching ordeal. She was the only one present whose eyes were not directed instantly toward the young dressmaker as she advanced a few steps to meet the new arrivals. Foremost in the group was the mistress of the carriage, a stately figure, richly attired, who wore her own gray hair folded smoothly above a pair of black brows and searching, usually severe eyes. They softened and shone at sight of the form in deep mourning, awaiting her pleasure, perhaps reading through the guise of lady-like self-possession the secret trouble that fluttered heart and pulse, while the trained features served the resolute will faithfully.

“My dear child!” she said, impulsively, holding fast to her parcels, but bending to kiss the cheek which flushed high under the salute.

Her daughters pressed forward to bestow caresses as affectionate upon “dear Imogen,” the family having recently returned from abroad. Their mother allowed them no time for inquiries or condolence.

“I am very, very glad to see you looking so well and bright!” she pursued, in a breezy, cheerful tone, neither shrill nor loud, but one that could make itself heard whenever and by whomsoever she willed. “I didn’t mean that my first call should be one of business, but I suppose you wouldn’t admit me upon any other plea, in business hours. But there’s the great Huntley wedding, week after next, you know, and the girls haven’t enough finery to warrant their appearance there—just from Paris, too! So we have come to cast ourselves upon your generosity and beg you, for the sake of old times and present friendship, to make us presentable. Unless you are too severely taxed already by the importunate friends of whom I see so many present. How is the dear father to-day? You must let me see him and mamma before I leave—and Emma and the babies! You mustn’t exclude us from the other parts of the house because you have taken to practicalities in sober, serious earnest. We would rebel outright, and en masse—after having been welcomed, during so many years, to the pleasantest home in the city!”

Imogen had led the way into the other parlor while the lady talked, and was now undoing the wrappings of the three silk dresses, and opening boxes of rare, fine lace on the long table. Her back was to the groups of attentive listeners to the foregoing monologue, and the keen eyes beside her saw her fingers shake, the long, brown lashes fall quickly to hide the unshed tears.

“You are very good!” said a gentle, grateful voice. “But I felt sure you would be!”

“My love!” A strong and not small hand—ungloved—a superb diamond solitaire, in itself a fortune, flashing on it as the guard to a worn wedding-ring—covered the chill, uncertain fingers, busy with paper and twine. Imogen felt the warmth and thrill of the pressure to her very heart. “If you ever dare to say another word like that, I’ll never forgive you! Trimmings, style, everything—we leave to you, Imogen, my dear!” she continued, aloud. “If you can make my girls half as distinguÉ as you are yourself in full dress, or home-dress either, for that matter, I shall be satisfied. I always told you you were a genius in your profession—creative, not merely imitative genius. It was a shame that you did not give others the benefit of it before now. It is refreshing to one who has cultivated any taste for the Æsthetic, to look about your rooms. I have lively hopes that dress may be understood and studied as one of the fine arts among us in time. You will be known in this generation and region, at least, as a benefactress. We go into another room to be measured, did you say?”

She swept her daughters before her into the fitting-room, and a buzz and rustle succeeded the silence her entrance had caused.

In Blanche’s hearing no one could comment openly upon what had passed. But there were significant whispers and wondering looks, and by the time the gossips reached the street, much and prolonged discussion with regard to this episode in the history of “opening day.”

For the eccentric old lady who could afford to defy the dictate of SOCIETY, and exercised her right, was Mrs. Horatio Harding, whose own veins were full of old, rich Dutch blood, and whose husband was a merchant prince, and Mr. Harding Walford was her nephew-in-law. If she had set her mind upon making the Hiller girls the fashion, she had carried her point triumphantly. With a sort of insolent grace, perhaps, at which people grumbled while they obeyed her, but she had had her way, as usual. Mrs. Horatio Harding had “opinions,” and it was not always safe or pleasant to oppose her.

“You may not know that you have done us a great service—one for which we can never pay you aright,” said Imogen to her at the close of “the season’s” work. “But you have! That we have succeeded beyond our most sanguine expectations is due, in a large measure, to the foothold you gave us that first day. If other women who have as much influence would use it to free, not enslave, their sex; to overcome, instead of strengthening the prejudices that bear so hardly upon us already, what a change would be wrought in homes where the few strive and toil, and the many are served!”

The strong white hand with the glittering solitaire, was raised threateningly.

“What did I tell you? I will not be praised for doing a simple act of justice, especially when my heart, as well as my conscience, moved me to it. And you, my sweet child, may not know that you have had a narrow escape from marrying a man who has proved himself no more worthy to mate with you than am I with one of the holy men of old—those of whom the world was not worthy. But you have. That is all I shall ever say on the subject. But I think the more for my reserve when with you. And Harding Walford knows that I do. I am not reticent in his hearing. Don’t attempt to defend him! He has lost you, and that ought to be punishment enough for one who is capable of appreciating you. Not that he ever was.”

“I don’t want him to be punished, dear Mrs. Harding,” replied Imogen, gently. “He only swam with the tide.”

“Precisely! and to deserve such a wife as you would make, a man ought to be strong of soul and right of purpose. Don’t talk to me about moral cowards! I think I was born hating them!”

Two years later, this steady friend dropped in to see the sisters on a gloomy afternoon in February. The light from the front windows made long, clean cuts in the clinging yellow fog without, across the rimy pavement to the carriage, with its liveried coachman and fine horses. Passers-by, on their way to humble homes, lifted eyelids beaded with the icy damp, and thought how lucky were the dwellers in the stately house; how much-to-be envied the guest who rode in state above the mire of the common ways. Those who recognized the liveries, and knew whose was the dwelling, pondered, more or less wonderingly, upon the incongruity of the unabated intimacy, and speculated, perhaps, upon the probabilities that the Harding pride would have revolted at a matrimonial alliance between a scion of their house and one of the “reduced” family, for all Mrs. Horatio’s show of friendship. It was a lucky thing, decided eight out of ten of those who considered the matter, that young Walford had not committed himself irrevocably before the “misfortune” that showed him how near he was to the edge of the abyss. He had made a desirable match last fall, and was now travelling in Europe with his heiress bride.

Little cared guest or hostesses what the outside world thought or believed respecting their intercourse. Emma’s boys were building block houses on the back parlor floor. The three sisters were gathered about the centre-table in the other room, talking in low voices over their work. Mrs. Harding stopped in the doorway on seeing their grave faces, and that they were making black crÊpe bonnets.

“A mourning order!” she said, in her unceremonious way. “Anybody that I know?”

“Not an order exactly,” explained Imogen, when they had welcomed her. “But poor Mr. Sibthorpe has gone at last, and Blanche proposed that we should spare the widow and three unmarried daughters the expense of bonnets and veils; so we are making them and the widow’s caps out of work hours. We do our charity work at such odd times you know—and together.

“You are the Blessed Three Sisters—that everybody knows!” uttered the visitor. “I don’t believe I could set a stitch for that tribe of lazy locusts! Amelia, the married one, is no better. Her husband failed awhile ago, as you may remember, and she is too proud to help him in the small haberdasher’s shop he has lately set up; sits at home like a—I won’t say lady—but an idiotic automaton—”

“Who ever heard of an intellectual one?” laughed Blanche.

“No pertness, miss! I don’t pick my terms when I am excited. She sits in the small parlor over the store, as I was saying, and curries favor with wealthy and charitable ladies by cutting sponge and velvet into monkey and black-and-tan terrier pen-wipers for fancy fairs. What are the Sibthorpe’s going to do, now that the man they murdered among them is dead?”

“His life was insured”—began Emma.

“Humph!” interrupted Mrs. Harding. “You needn’t proceed. They will eat the insurance up to the last dollar, and by that time the boys will be big enough to divide the women among them; to carry them bodily—their expenses, that is—as we see ants running about with egg sacs bigger than themselves on their shoulders. I know the old, hideous story by heart. Drop the subject.”

“Let me give you a piece of news that will entertain you better,” said Blanche, merrily. “One of the Payne girls—Sophia, the youngest—is going to marry a widower with eight children—all at home.”

“Serves her right! But I am sorry for the children. Go on!”

“The happy man is a Mr. Gregorias, of Spanish extraction. He is small and withered, and reported to be rich as cream. So Arethusa says. The wedding dress is to be of white satin, with point lace veil and flounces—the gift of the groom.”

“Have you undertaken the trousseau?” queried Mrs. Harding, fixing her keen gaze upon Imogen.

“No,” she answered, coloring as she smiled. “I have declined making any engagements for the spring. I am going abroad for a year in May, and Blanche does not want a stranger here in my place.”

“Markham Burke is the man, then! My love! I congratulate you with all my heart. I have been on thorns all winter about you and the noble fellow. I was afraid you had some Quixotic notions that would stand in the way of his happiness and yours.”

“No; why should I have?” rejoined the fiancÉe, speaking quietly and sensibly. “We are not vowed to our trades, or to celibacy. Markham says there is no need that he, with his ample means, should let me keep up my business. Whatever I have made, he insists upon settling upon me. He would have had me divide it all between Blanche and Emma, but they would not allow it.”

“I should hope not!” cried Blanche, energetically. “Two women who can take care of themselves!’”

“Blanche will enlarge her department,” continued Imogen, “now that I will leave her room. You should hear her plans of making a temple of art—not of fashion alone—in these two parlors. It will be very beautiful. She can afford to indulge her taste in these respects. She is making money.”

“Means to be a nabob-ess before she dies—or marries,” interjected the youngest sister.

“You are a mercenary witch,” said Mrs. Harding. “Emma, Mr. Harding says your lots are rising in value fast, and the price of land in that quarter of the city is sure to increase with tenfold rapidity during the next dozen years. He would not advise you to close with the offer made you last week, unless you need the money.”

“Thank you and him!” replied the young widow. “I am not anxious to sell. Let it grow for the boys. It belongs to them. The rest of us are provided for. Even for mamma there is enough and to spare. We have never been tempted by the various straits of poverty and shabby gentility to wish for our father’s death, that we might profit by his life-insurance policy. Feeble as he is, his cheerfulness, his patience and affection for us all, make his a very bright presence in our home. It is a priceless comfort to us all that he is not compelled, when he needs them most, to relinquish the home and luxuries he toiled so long and bravely to obtain for us.”

“You can’t imagine what pride and delight he takes in the boys!” exclaimed Blanche. “We really hope he may live to see them grown.”

“It is the story of the old storks and their young, to the life,” said Mrs. Harding to her husband that night. “I used to think it a fable. I believe now that it is true, out and out!”

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