dowager."

"Like little Helen's kitten," said Philip. "She justly remarks that,
since I saw it last, it is all spoiled into a great big cat."

"Those must be snobs," said Harry, as a carriage with unusually gorgeous
liveries rolled by.

"I suppose so," said Malbone, indifferently. "In Oldport we call all
new-comers snobs, you know, till they have invited us to their grand
ball. Then we go to it, and afterwards speak well of them, and only
abuse their wine."

"How do you know them for new-comers?" asked Hope, looking after the
carriage.

"By their improperly intelligent expression," returned Phil. "They look
around them as you do, my child, with the air of wide-awake curiosity
which marks the American traveller. That is out of place here. The
Avenue abhors everything but a vacuum."

"I never can find out," continued Hope, "how people recognize each other
here. They do not look at each other, unless they know each other: and
how are they to know if they know, unless they look first?"

"It seems an embarrassment," said Malbone. "But it is supposed that
fashion perforates the eyelids and looks through. If you attempt it in
any other way, you are lost. Newly arrived people look about them, and,
the more new wealth they have, the more they gaze. The men are uneasy
behind their recently educated mustaches, and the women hold their
parasols with trembling hands. It takes two years to learn to drive
on the Avenue. Come again next summer, and you will see in those same
carriages faces of remote superciliousness, that suggest generations of
gout and ancestors."

"What a pity one feels," said Harry, "for these people who still suffer
from lingering modesty, and need a master to teach them to be insolent!"

"They learn it soon enough," said Kate. "Philip is right. Fashion lies
in the eye. People fix their own position by the way they don't look at
you."

"There is a certain indifference of manner," philosophized Malbone,
"before which ingenuous youth is crushed. I may know that a man can
hardly read or write, and that his father was a ragpicker till one day
he picked up bank-notes for a million. No matter. If he does not take
the trouble to look at me, I must look reverentially at him."

"Here is somebody who will look at Hope," cried Kate, suddenly.

A carriage passed, bearing a young lady with fair hair, and a keen,
bright look, talking eagerly to a small and quiet youth beside her.

Her face brightened still more