t to ally himself with one of his own kind.

V.

The next evening old Mr. Sillerton Jackson came to dine with the
Archers.

Mrs. Archer was a shy woman and shrank from society; but she liked to
be well-informed as to its doings. Her old friend Mr. Sillerton
Jackson applied to the investigation of his friends' affairs the
patience of a collector and the science of a naturalist; and his
sister, Miss Sophy Jackson, who lived with him, and was entertained by
all the people who could not secure her much-sought-after brother,
brought home bits of minor gossip that filled out usefully the gaps in
his picture.

Therefore, whenever anything happened that Mrs. Archer wanted to know
about, she asked Mr. Jackson to dine; and as she honoured few people
with her invitations, and as she and her daughter Janey were an
excellent audience, Mr. Jackson usually came himself instead of sending
his sister. If he could have dictated all the conditions, he would
have chosen the evenings when Newland was out; not because the young
man was uncongenial to him (the two got on capitally at their club) but
because the old anecdotist sometimes felt, on Newland's part, a
tendency to weigh his evidence that the ladies of the family never
showed.

Mr. Jackson, if perfection had been attainable on earth, would also
have asked that Mrs. Archer's food should be a little better. But then
New York, as far back as the mind of man could travel, had been divided
into the two great fundamental groups of the Mingotts and Mansons and
all their clan, who cared about eating and clothes and money, and the
Archer-Newland-van-der-Luyden tribe, who were devoted to travel,
horticulture and the best fiction, and looked down on the grosser forms
of pleasure.

You couldn't have everything, after all. If you dined with the Lovell
Mingotts you got canvas-back and terrapin and vintage wines; at Adeline
Archer's you could talk about Alpine scenery and "The Marble Faun"; and
luckily the Archer Madeira had gone round the Cape. Therefore when a
friendly summons came from Mrs. Archer, Mr. Jackson, who was a true
eclectic, would usually say to his sister: "I've been a little gouty
since my last dinner at the Lovell Mingotts'--it will do me good to
diet at Adeline's."

Mrs. Archer, who had long been a widow, lived with her son and daughter
in West Twenty-eighth Street. An upper floor was dedicated to Newland,
and the two women squeezed themselves into narrower qu