“I know it is horrid to swoop down upon you at this barbarously early hour, but I couldn’t help coming the minute I received your card. We get our mail at the breakfast table, and I fairly screamed with joy when I opened the envelope. ‘Jack!’ I said, ‘who do you think has come to New York to live?’

“‘The Picanninnies and the Joblillies and the Garyulies, and probably the grand Panjandrum himself,’ said my gentleman.

“You know what a tease he is. Oh, no, you don’t! for you never met him. But you will before long! ‘Better than all of them put together, with the little round button on top,’ said I. (You see I am used to his chaff!) ‘My very dearest school friend, of whom you have heard me talk ten thousand times—Susie Barnes, now Mrs. Cornell. She has been living five years in Brooklyn (and I’ve always declared I’d rather go to Canada than to Brooklyn) and here’s her card telling me that she has returned to civilization. Mrs. Arthur Hayward Cornell, No. — West Sixty-seventh St.’ At that he pricked up his ears.

“‘That’s the new cashier in the Pin and Needle Bank,’ says he. ‘Somebody was talking of him at the Club last night.’ And nothing would do but I must tell him all about you. In going over the story and thinking of the dear old times, my heart got so warm and full that I rushed off by the time he was out of the house.”

Mrs. John Hitt, a well-dressed, prettyish woman, whom the cold morning light showed to be also a trifle society-worn, embraced her hostess anew, and then held her off at arm’s length for inspection.

“You sweet old girl! what sort of life have you led that you have kept your roses, your dimples, and the sparkle in your eyes all these years? Do you know that you are absolutely bewitching?”

The lately recovered friend smiled, coloring as a woman of Mrs. Hitt’s world could not have done.

“You are the same impulsive Kitty!” she said affectionately. “I have had a quiet, busy, happy life with Arthur and the children. Three babies in five years do not give a housekeeper much time for anything but domestic duties.”

“I should think not, indeed!” The shiver of shoulders was well-executed, the heavenward cast of eyes and hands dramatic. “I wonder you live to tell it! One child in six years has been enough to unsettle my wits. Now that you are once more within my reach (Oh, you darling!) we must make up for lost time and see a great deal of each other! Do you ever sing nowadays? Or have you let your music go to the dogs? I suppose so, if Providence has interfered to save your wild-rose complexion. I was raving to Jack this morning over the voice you used to have, and your genius for theatricals and all that. ‘Indeed,’ said I, ‘there was nothing that girl couldn’t do.’ To think of wasting such an organ, or wearing it thin in crooning nursery ditties.”

Mrs. Cornell laughed a soft, merry burst of amusement, at which the other eyed her curiously.

“You behave less like an exhumed corpse than anybody could imagine who knew of your five years in Brooklyn, and the three younglings. What amuses you?”

“Nothing, except your determination to regard me as dead, buried, and resurrected. So far from giving up my music, I have practiced more steadily than if I had spent more evenings abroad. You know I studied vocal and instrumental music with the intention of making it my profession. Arthur agrees with me that what is once learned should never be lost. Then, when my little girls are ready to be taught, I can instruct them myself. We had a number of musical friends in Brooklyn, and a pleasant circle of acquaintances. We have not lived in—Hoboken,” cried the hostess in whimsical vexation. “I don’t see why New Yorkers always talk of Brooklyn as if it were as far off and as much a terra incognita as the moon. We are inhabitants of the same planet as yourselves.”

The visitor patted the back of her companion’s hand, soothingly. “You are a New Yorker now—one of us!” she purred. “In six months you would as soon cross the Styx as the East River, even on that overgrown, preposterous Bridge the Brooklynites give themselves such airs over. How prettily settled you are!” staring, rather than glancing about the apartment. “These are nice drawing rooms and furnished in excellent taste.”

Mrs. Cornell had regarded them as “parlors,” but her first concession to Mrs. Hitt’s better knowledge was to look accustomed to the new term. She fought down with equal success the impulse to classify Kitty’s open admiration with the amiable patronage of which Brooklyn people are inclined to suspect New Yorkers. She plumed herself modestly upon her taste in house-furnishing and upon the ability to make cheap things look as if they had cost a good deal. She had withheld the fact of the change of residence from metropolitan acquaintances until her house was in order that might defy unfavorable criticism. It was kind in Kitty to run in so unceremoniously and to be glad of the chance to renew their early intimacy. In spite of Arthur and the children, she had begun to be somewhat homesick in the great whirling world about her.

“Like a chip in the Atlantic Ocean!” Thus she had described her sensations to her husband that very morning. “I suppose I shall get used to it after a while, especially as Brooklyn and New York are, to all intents and purposes, one and the same city.”

She asserted it stoutly, knowing all the while that Moscow and New Orleans were as nearly homogeneous.

Yes! Kitty was heartily welcome to the stranger in an unknown territory. Mrs. Hitt was not intellectual, and judged by standards Arthur Cornell’s wife had come to revere sincerely, she was not especially refined in speech and bearing. Or were Susie’s tastes too quiet and her ideas old-fashioned, that her interlocutor’s crisp sayings sounded pert, and the bright brown eyes and fixed flush upon the cheekbones were artificially aggressive? Her former chum had always been warm-hearted, if inconveniently outspoken. And she was a New Yorker, and fashionable. Susie’s cherished ambition, unavowed even to Arthur while it was expedient for them to live simply, was to be fashionable, brilliant, and courted—a member in good and regular standing in the Society of which Mrs. Sherwood lectured, and Ellen Olney Kirk wrote, and to which Jenkyns Knickerbocker was au fait. A certain something that was not air or tone, deportment or attire, and yet partook of all these as pot-pourri of rose-breath, spices, and perfumed oils—marked Kitty Hitt as an habituÉe of the charmed Reserve. She was not, perhaps, one of the Four Hundred selected from the Upper Ten Thousand by processes as arbitrary, to human judgment, as those by which Gideon’s three hundred were picked out from the hosts of Israel. Susie was no simpleton, albeit ambitious. Mr. Hitt was a stockbroker; hence manifestly in the line of promotion, but there were degrees of elevation upon even Olympus. Her imagination durst not lift eyes to the cloud-wreathed summit where chief gods held revel, guarded from vulgar intrusion by Gabriel Macallister. The climate and manner of life a few leagues lower down would, as she felt, suit her better than the rarified atmosphere of the extremest heights. She had always meant to climb, and successfully, when time and opportunity should serve. From the moment the passage of the river was determined upon as a business necessity, she felt intuitively that both of these were near.

“We think them cozy!” she assented quietly to the visitor’s praise of her rooms.

“Cozy! they are lovely!”

While she talked she raised her eye-glasses to make note of some fine etchings upon the walls and a choice water-color upon an easel, and took in, in passing, the circumstance that the rugs laid upon the polished floor were of prime quality, although neither large nor numerous.

“I do hope you don’t mean to shut yourself up in your pretty cage as so many pattern wives and mothers—particularly Brooklyn women” (roguishly) “do? That’s the reason American society is so crude and colorless. With your face and figure and accomplishments (I haven’t forgotten how divinely you recite) you ought to become a Social Success—a star in the world of Society. You ought indeed!” drowning the feeble murmur of dissent. “There’s many a so-named leader of the gay world who doesn’t hold, and who never did hold such a card. Just trust yourself to me, and I will prove all I promise.”

“But, my dear Kitty, I lack the Open Sesame to the Gotham Innermost—Money! Only the repeatedly-millionaired can pass the outer courts.”

“There it is! Epigrams and bon-mots drop from your lips as pearls and diamonds used to tumble out whenever the good little girl in the Fairy-tale opened her mouth. As to millions of money—bah!” with a gesture of royal disdain. “Our best people are not the richest. The true New Yorker knows that. Of course one must live and dress well, but your husband’s means amply warrant that. Jack says cashiers get from ten to fifteen thousand dollars a year. Your face, your manner, and your talents are all the passport you require when once you are introduced. I claim the privilege of doing it. And, as an initial step, I want you and Mr. Cornell to dine with us to-morrow evening. I’ll ask six or eight of the nicest people I know to meet you. They’ll excuse the shortness of the notice when they see what a reason I have for calling them together. Put on a pretty gown and look your loveliest and bring along some music. I mean that you shall capture all hearts. I shall be grieved to the quick if you don’t. The hour will be seven—sharp. Punctuality is the soul of good humor in a dinner company. I must run away. I have an appointment with a tyrannical dressmaker at half-past ten; Mr. Lincoln’s Literature Class at eleven; a luncheon at half-past one; and afternoon tea, anywhere from four to six; a dinner party, and after that the opera. Such a whirl! Yet, as I say to Jack when he grumbles that we never have a quiet home evening—it is the only life worth living, as you’ll own when you’ve had a taste of it! (You dear thing! it rests my tired eyes just to look at you!) Here’s Jack’s card for Mr. Cornell. I’m just dying to see him and if he is good enough for you.”

“A great deal too good!” ejaculated Susie, earnestly, through this accidental gap in the monologue. “The dearest, most generous fellow!”

“Cela va sans dire—with the Brooklyn model! I’m so happy that you are one of us, and no longer a pattern article. Good-by!”

“There! I let her go without showing her the children,” reflected Mrs. Cornell, when she got back her breath. “But we had so much to talk of it is no wonder we forgot them. There are no friends like the old friends. How unjust we are sometimes! I came near not sending her my card because she had never been over to Brooklyn to see me all the while I was there. And Arthur advised me against doing it. He would have it that it is no further from New York to Brooklyn than from Brooklyn to New York. He predicted, too, that she would never come to see me here. He says there’s no other memory so short as that of a woman who has risen fast upon the social ladder. This ought to be a lesson in Christian charity to us both. Kitty’s heart is always in the right place.”

With a becoming mantling of rose-pink in her cheeks, she went singing about her “drawing” rooms, altering the angle of chairs and sofas, and the arrangement of bric-a-brac, already viewing her appointments through Kitty’s eye-glasses. Her thoughts were running upon the projected dinner party. She was the proud owner of a black velvet gown with a trained skirt, and a V-shaped front, and of dainty laces wherewith to fill the triangle. She had a diamond pin and earrings—wedding gifts from the wealthy aunt for whom she was named. The same generous relative had bestowed upon her, at different holiday seasons, the rugs and pictures that adorned her house. Aunt Susan might always be depended upon to do the handsome thing, and she was fond of this niece and her “steady” husband. The home of Susie’s girlhood had been more plainly furnished, as Kitty had known and must recollect. It was natural that the elegant grace characterizing Mrs. Cornell’s abode should mislead the shrewd observer in the estimate of the cashier’s income. Without surmising what had suggested the remark, or that it was a “feeler,” Mrs. Cornell smiled, yet a little uneasily, in recalling it.

“Kitty is so used to hearing of big sums that her ideas are vague on the subject of salaries,” meditated the better informed wife. “She doesn’t dream how handsomely people can live on six thousand dollars. Or that we got along on one-half that much in Brooklyn and laid aside something yearly. It is none of my business to set her right. Arthur doesn’t care to have his money affairs discussed.”

It did not occur to her as a possibility that from the pardonable disingenuousness any serious trouble could ever arise, yet she knew what Arthur would say. She heard, in imagination, his warning:

“Never sail under false colors, Susie!”

Therefore, in her animated description of call and conversation, she omitted all mention of Kitty’s tentative allusion to their income. Not knowing his wife’s old comrade, he might think her prying and impertinent in touching upon such a subject at all. Poor, dear Kitty! there were disadvantages in being so impetuously frank. A clear-headed cool reasoner like Arthur, for instance, was almost sure to misread her.

As our heroine had told Kitty, her married life had been quiet. Her vivacious friend would have called it “stupid.” The circle of congenial friends had been circumscribed and most of them were people of moderate means and desires. Brooklyn might be called a segregation of neighborhoods, each district having manners, customs, and social code peculiar to the village that was its germ. As one settlement ran into another, a city grew that claims the respect of the mightier sister across the river. The Cornells had lived in a pleasant house in a pleasant street, and Susie had spoken truly in saying that they lived well. With no pretense of entertaining, they were cordially hospitable, “having” friends to supper, or to pass the evening, whenever fair occasion offered. For the children’s sake the mother took her principal meal with them at one o’clock, but the hearty tea prepared for the father who had lunched frugally in town was invariably appetizing, being well cooked and daintily served. He had the privilege not always accorded to richer men who sit down daily to late “course dinners”—that of bringing a crony home with him whenever he pleased. It was like Arthur Cornell to choose as chance guests men who had not such homes as his—bank clerks from the country, Bohemian artists of good character and light purses, and the like. Such were the honored recipients of the hostess’ smile and warm handshake. She had won the admiring reverence of more than one homeless bachelor by her skill in delicate and savory cookery and the gracious friendliness of her welcome, and these, oftener than any other class, composed the delighted audience of the music Arthur called for every evening.

Once or twice a month husband and wife went to the theater or a concert, and twice or at the most three times a year to the opera. They were pretty sure to have complimentary tickets to the water-color exhibition and other displays of paintings in Brooklyn or New York. Of receptions, they knew comparatively little except such as followed weddings among their acquaintances. Neither had ever attended a regular dinner party gotten up by a professional caterer, and the ladies’ luncheon of eight, ten, or a dozen courses was unknown by the seeing of the eyes and the tasting of the palate to the bright woman whose social successes in a new arena were foretold by the sanguine admirer who craved the pleasure of bringing her out. There are still in fast growing American cities tens of thousands of such people who live honestly, comfortably, and beneficently, and whose homes are refined centers of happiness and goodness.

There was, then, cause for the wife’s pleasurable flutter of spirits and the doubtful satisfaction expressed, against his intention, in the husband’s visage at the close prospect of a state banquet given in honor of their undistinguished selves, at which anonymous edibles would be washed down with foreign wines, and spicy entrÉes be punctuated by spicy hors d’oeuvres. Arthur’s predominant quality was sound sense, and as his spouse had anticipated, his first emotion after hearing her tale was wonder at the sudden and violent increase of friendship consequent upon their change of residence, in one who had apparently forgotten the unimportant fact of her favorite schoolfellow’s existence for more than five years.

“I can’t imagine why she should care to take us up now,” he demurred.

Susie’s ready flush testified to the hurt he had dealt her pride or affections. She thought to the latter.

“If you would only not let your prejudice master your reason!” she sighed. “All New York women hate and dread ferries.”

“There is the Bridge!” put in the Brooklyn-born literalist.

“Which would have taken visitors miles away from us. I was afraid you would wet-blanket the whole affair. I really dreaded to tell you of what I was silly enough to look forward to with pleasure. You see you don’t know what a fine, genuine creature Kitty is. But we won’t dispute over her or her dinner party. I can write to her and say that we regret our inability to accept the invitation.”

Arthur closed his teeth upon another struggling sentence. Although even less of a society man than she was of a society woman, he had a definite impression that invitations to dinner were usually sent out some days in advance of the “occasion.” Less distinct, because intuitive, was the idea that gay young women, already laden with social obligations, did not press attentions upon everyday folk from Brooklyn, E. D., unless they hoped to gain something by it, or were addicted to patronage. The former hypothesis being, as he conceived, untenable, it followed that Mrs. Hitt, a good-natured rattle, must have said more than she meant of her intentions toward the strangers, or that she had a native fondness for playing the lady patroness.

Loving and admiring his wife from the full depths of a quiet heart, he held all this back. Susie was vivacious, ready of wit and speech, and he was not. She dearly enjoyed excitement and new acquaintances. Give him dressing jacket, slippers, and an interesting book, or his wife’s music and his own fireside, and he would not have exchanged places with Ward Macallister at his complacent best. Susie would shine anywhere; she was born to it! He was not even a first-class reflector of her rays. Yet this noblest of women had stood by him with cheerful gallantry in their less prosperous days. He had told her over and over that she had hidden her light under a bushel in becoming the mistress of such a home as he had to give her, but she had loyally denied this, and borne her part bravely in the struggle to lap the non-elastic ends of their common income. To her capital management he owed much of their present comfort.

Arthur Cornell reasoned slowly, but always in a straight line.

“I am a selfish, brutal fellow, darling,” he said at this point of his cogitations. “I am afraid I am a little tired to-night. We have had a busy day at the Bank. You mustn’t mind my growls. When we have had sup—dinner, I would say!—you’ll find me more than willing to listen and sympathize.”

Her satisfactory answer was to come over and kiss him silently, taking his head between her hands and laying her cheek upon it. The hair was getting thin on the top, and the gaslight brought into gleaming conspicuousness a few gray hairs. He was older than she by nine years. It would not be surprising if, for a long time yet, he continued to say “supper” instead of “dinner.” She was certain he would never learn to talk of the “drawing room.” But he was her very own, and dearly beloved, and the kindest, noblest fellow in the world. Whatever he might do or say, she could never be angry with or ashamed of him.