A hundred thousand dollars!" repeated her husband, scornfully. "Ay, and
twice twenty thousand pounds on the top of that. He's done well, has
Dolph. All the more reason he should stick to his trade; and not go to
lolling in the sun, like a runner at the Custom-House door. He's not
within ten years of me, and here he must build his country house, and
set up for the fine gentleman. Jacob Dolph! Did I go on his note, when
he came back from France, brave as my master, in '94, or did I not? And
where 'ud he have raised twenty thousand in this town, if I hadn't?
What's got into folks nowadays? Damn me if I can see!"

His wife protested, in wifely fashion. "I'm sure, Van Riper," she began,
"you've no need to fly in such a huff if I so much as speak of folks who
have some conceit of being genteel. It's only proper pride of Mr. Dolph
to have a country house, and--" (her voice faltering a little,
timorously) "ride in and--and out----"

"_Ride!_" snorted Mr. Van Riper. "In a carriage, maybe?"

"In a carriage, Van Riper. You may think to ride in a carriage is like
being the Pope of Rome; but there's some that knows better. And if you'd
set up your carriage," went on the undaunted Mrs. Van Riper, "and gone
over to Greenwich Street two years ago, as I'd have had you, and made
yourself friendly with those people there, I'd have been on the Orphan
Asylum Board at this very minute; and _you_ would----"

Mr. Van Riper knew all that speech by heart, in all its variations. He
knew perfectly well what it would end in, this time, although he was not
a man of quick perception: "He would have been a member of the new
Historical Society."

"Yes," he thought to himself, as he found his hat and shuffled out into
Pine Street; "and John Pintard would have had my good check in his
pocket for his tuppenny society. Pine Street is fine enough for me."

Mr. Van Riper had more cause for his petulancy than he would have
acknowledged even to himself. He was a man who had kept his shop open
all through Clinton's occupancy, and who had had no trouble with the
British. And when they were gone he had had to do enough to clear his
skirts of any smirch of Toryism, and to implant in his own breast a
settled feeling of militant Americanism. He did not like it that the
order of things should change--and the order of things was changing.
The town was growing out of all knowledge of itself. Here they had their
Orphan Asylum, and their Botanical Garden, and their