"How any woman can do so is more than I can understand."

"So it is, Mrs. Raynor. Just to think of dressing your child up in a
frock as good as stolen! Isn't it dreadful?"

"It is, indeed!"

"Mrs. Comegys is not an honest woman. That is clear. I am told that
this is not the first trick of the kind of which she has been
guilty. They say that she has a natural propensity to take things
that are not her own."

"I can hardly believe that."

"Nor can I. But it's no harder to believe this than to believe that
she would cheat Perkins out of fifteen of twenty yards of lawn. It's
a pity; for Mrs. Comegys, in every thing else, is certainly a very
nice woman. In fact, I don't know any one I visit with so much
pleasure."

Thus the circle of detraction widened, until there was scarcely a
friend or acquaintance of Mrs. Comegys, near or remote, who had not
heard of her having cheated a dry goods dealer out of several yards
of lawn. Three, it had first been alleged; but the most common
version of the story made it fifteen or twenty. Meantime, Mrs.
Comegys remained in entire ignorance of what was alleged against
her, although she noticed in two or three of her acquaintances, a
trifling coldness that struck her as rather singular.

One day her husband, seeing that she looked quite sober, said--

"You seem quite dull to-day, dear. Don't you feel well?"

"Yes, I feel as well as usual, in body."

"But not in mind?"

"I do not feel quite comfortable in mind, certainly, though I don't
know that I have any serious cause of uneasiness."

"Though a slight cause exists. May I ask what it is?"

"It is nothing more nor less than that I was coolly _cut_ by an old
friend to-day, whom I met in a store on Chesnut street. And as she
is a woman that I highly esteem, both for the excellence of her
character, and the agreeable qualities, as a friend, that she
possesses. I cannot but feel a little bad about it. If she were one
of that capricious class who get offended with you, once a month,
for no just cause whatever, I should not care a fig. But Mrs. Markle
is a woman of character, good sense and good feeling, whose
friendship I have always prized."

"Was it Mrs. Markle?" said the husband, with some surprise.

"Yes."

"What can possibly be the cause?"

"I cannot tell."

"Have you thought over every thing?"

"Yes, I have turned and turned the matter in my mind, but can
imagine no reason why she, of all others, could treat me c