A Hazard of New Fortunes, Part Third

tions of their lives, and that they must receive the advance she had made them with a certain grateful humility. However they received it, she had made it upon principle, from a ro

hat embodiment of impassioned suspicion which we find oftenest in the narrowest spheres, and Mela would always have been a good-natured simpleton; but they would never have doubted their equality with the wisest and the finest. As it was, they had not learned enough at school to doubt it, and the splendo

t afternoon, and they consulted her about going to Mrs. Horn's musicale. If she had felt any doubt at the name for there were Horns and Horns-the address on the card put the matter beyond question; and she tried to make her charges understand what a precious chance had befallen them. She did not succeed; they had not the premises, the experience, for a sufficient impression; and she undid her work in part by the effort to explain that Mrs. Horn's standing was independent of money; that though she was positively rich, she was comparatively poor. Christine inferred that Miss Vance had called because s

plate, with his head close to it, and making play into his mouth with the back of his knife (he had got so far toward the use of his fork as to despise t

irable to him. He had once respected himself for the hard-headed, practical common sense which first gave him standing among his country neighbors; which made him supervisor, school trustee, justice of the peace, county commissioner, secretary of the Moffitt County Agricultural Society. In those days he had served the public with disinterested zeal and proud ability; he used to write to the Lake Shore Farmer on agricultural topics; he took part in opposing, through the Moffitt papers, the legislative waste of the people's money; on the question of selling a local canal to th

citizen, and a good husband. As a good father, he was rather severe with his children, and used to whip them, especially the gentle Conrad, who somehow crossed him most, till the twins died. After that he never struck any of them; and from the sight of a blow dealt a horse he turned as if sick. It was a long time before he lifted himself up from his sorrow, and then the will of the

the local speculators had instilled into him began to work in the vanity which had succeeded his somewhat scornful self-respect; he rejected Europe as the proper field for his expansion; he rejected Washington; he preferred New York, whither the men who have made money and do not yet know that money has made them, all instinctively turn. He came where he could watch his money breed more money, and bring greater increase of its kind in an hour of luck than the toil of hundreds of men could earn in a year. He called it speculation, stocks, the Street; and his pride, his faith in himself, mounted with his luck. He expected, when he had sated his greed, to begin to spend, and he had formulated an intention to build a great house, to add another to the palaces of the country-bred millionaires who have come to adorn the great city. In the mean time he made little account of the things that occupied his children, except to fret at the ungratefu

ever she was, that Mrs. Mandel seemed to think had honored his girls by com

whether Christine's goon' or not; I am.

rs. Mandel, with her unfailing dignity and

e felt too well corporeally, ever to be quite cross. "She might 'a' knowed-well known-we couldn't

could come with your moth

Christine? Or, yes, she did, too. And I told her

n," said Christine. "I wasn

reproachful, half proud of this attitude of Christine. "Well, I don't see but w

properly take him without an expr

nd protest. "I-I don't thin

re not such a sheep that you're afraid to go into compan

me out and danced that way," said Mrs. Dryfoos, "I don't bla

mother. "Well, I wish Miss Vance could 'a' heard t

n't know what it was like. I hain't never been to one, and you

ed the passage between his wife and daughter in

nt that night-it's

ght," said Dryfoos. "It can't be so important as

hose poor creatures. They dep

d it for one night," sa

e have with

aid his mother. "It's t

ey're not meant just

e father. "Now you just make your plans to go with the girls, Tuesd

want to take Conrad away fro

igh, fine voice. "They could get along w

, just think out some other way. Say! What's the reason we couldn

d be all

mean," Mela co

e significant, unless it w

son to take us. He's the ol

. Fulkerson," said

pleaded, "Mr. Fulkerson is a very goo

n times as pleasant as

stin

e at this sally, but her father said: "Christine is right, Mela. It woul

I want to go, yet

elves. But if you want to go,

woman pleaded. "I reckon it ain't agoun' to be anything very bad;

ht, mother. And I w

awther!" This appeal was to make the old man say

at it's those of your own househol

h. Your fawther ain't a perfesser, but he always did rea

her, where Conrad's wantun' to be a preacher comes from.

nce in the churches," sai

me of the lady ministers nowadays, you'd git yourself into troubl