n
top of the steps giggled.

"Come, look sharp, I can't wait all day," says he, as pert as a fox.

"Well," says I; "being an unprotected female in a strange place, I can't
help myself, I guess; but they do sell politeness awful dear in York. It
must be scarce."

I gave him three dollars without another word, feeling like a robbed
princess as I did it. Then I took the bandbox and new satchel in my
hand, and walked into Smith's boarding-house, about the homesickest
creature that ever bore a cross.

II.

PHOEMIE'S FIRST VISIT.

Sisters:--Some of you must remember my cousin Emily Elizabeth Frost,
that married a Dempster ten years ago when most of us were little mites
of things sewing our over-and-over seams. She was a smart creature
enough, and as her mother was a proper, nice woman, it was reasonable to
hope that she could be depended on to bring up her children; for her
father was a deacon in the church, and her mother just the salt of the
earth. Well, as soon as I got settled in my boarding-house, I took it
into my head to go and see Cousin Elizabeth. She hadn't been to Vermont
lately, and I'd rather lost track of her; so I gave one morning to
hunting her up.

Some useful things can be found in a great city like this. Now, I tell
you, amongst them is a great, fat dictionary, crowded full of names,
where everybody that keeps a decent house sets down the number, which is
a convenience for strangers like me.

I found the name of Cousin Elizabeth's husband, who keeps a bank
somewhere down town, the book said, and got into the first street car
that went towards the Central Park. After a while I got out and hunted
up the number, feeling awfully anxious, for the houses about there were
what the papers call palatial--a word we have not much use for in our
parts. I just stopped on the other side of the street and took a general
survey before I attempted to go in, feeling more and more fidgety every
minute, for that house just took me down with its sumptuousness. Such
great windows, with one monstrous pane in a sash, and lace and silk and
tassels shining through! The front was four stories high and ended off
with the steepest roof you ever saw, just sloping back a trifle, and
flattening off at the top, with windows in it, and all sorts of colors
in the shingles, which they call "tiles" here. Then the stone steps
wound up to a platform with a heavy stone railing on each side, and a
great shiny door, sunk deep int