he old lady, "we are now
poor people. We shall sell this house, and go and live in a small way out
of sight."

"Fiddle, diddle! my dear," returned Mrs. Dagon, warmly; "you'll do no
such thing. Poor people, indeed! Why, May, you know nothing about these
things. Failing, failing; why, my dear, that's nothing. A New York
merchant expects to fail, just as an English lord expects to have the
gout. It isn't exactly a pleasant thing, but it's extremely respectable.
Every body fails. It's understood."

"What's understood?" asked May.

"Why, that business is a kind of game, and that every body runs for luck.
Oh, I know all about it, my dear! It's all a string of cards--as Colonel
Burr used to say; and I think if any body knew the world he did--it's all
a string of blocks. B trusts A, C trusts B, D trusts C, and so on. A
tumbles over, and down go B, and C, and D. That's the whole of it, my
dear. Colonel Burr used to say that his rule was to keep himself just out
of reach of any other block. If they knock me over, my dear Miss Bunley,
he once said to me--ah! May, what a voice he said it in, what an eye!--if
they knock me over, I shall be so busy picking myself up that I shall be
forced to be selfish, and can't help them, so I had better keep away, and
then I can be of some service. That was Colonel Burr's principle. He
declared it was the only way in which you could be sure of helping
others. People talk about Colonel Burr. My dear, Colonel Burr was a man
who minded his own business."

May Newt held her tongue. She felt instinctively that a woman of
sixty-five, who had been trained by Colonel Burr, was not very likely to
accept the opinions of a girl of her years. Mrs. Newt was feebly rocking
herself during the conversation between her daughter and aunt; and when
they had finished said, despairingly,

"Dear me! what will people say? Oh! I can't go and live poor. I'm not
used to it. I don't know how."

"Live poor!" sniffed Mrs. Dagon; "of course you won't live poor. I've
heard Boniface say often enough that it was too bad, but it was a world
of good-for-nothing people; and you don't think he's going to let
good-for-nothing people drive him from a becoming style of living?
Fiddle! I'd like to see him undertake to live poor."

"Do you think people will come to see us?" gasped Mrs. Newt.

"Come? Of course they will. They'll all rush, the first thing, to see how
you take it. Why, such a thing as this is a godsend to 'em. They'