drik, but confessed to the
prettiness of Sally Wimple.

But now there was no longer a grateful life for her white rose-star to
brighten; so she sat down, in her loneliness and sombre unbecomingness,
between her forlorn counters with their pitiful shows of stock, and let
her good looks go by, entertaining only brave thoughts of duty,--till
she grew pale "and fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces,"
so that "how anybody could see the least beauty in that distressing
Miss Wimple" began to be with many a sincere and almost reasonable
expression of surprise, instead of a malicious sin against knowledge.
She waited for customers, but they seldom came,--often, from opening to
window-barring, not one; for the unwilting little martyr of the Hendrik
Athenaeum and Circulating Library had made herself a highly
disapproved-of Miss Wimple by her ungrateful and contumacious behavior
at her father's death, even if the hard and sharp black lines of that
scrimped delaine had not sufficed to turn the current of admiration,
interest, and custom. Besides, the attractions of her slender stock
were all exhausted. She had not the means of refreshing it with pretty
novelties and sentimental toys in that line,--with albums and
valentines, fancy portfolios and pocket-secretaries, pearl paper-knives
and tortoise-shell cardcases, Chinese puzzles and _papier-mache_
checker-boards. Nor was the Library replenished "to keep up with the
current literature of the day"; its last new novel was a superannuated
dilapidation; not one of its yearly subscribers but had worked through
the catalogue once and a half.

Since the funeral, and especially since the inauguration of the
delaine, Mrs. Marmaduke Splurge had been less alive to the necessity of
improving the minds of her girls; and that virginal ten-dollar
investment had provided Josephine, Adelaide, and Madeline with supplies
of small arms and ammunition enough for a protracted campaign of
epistolary belligerence, interrupted by hair-strokes of coquettish
diplomacy.

In the flaunting yellow house on the hill the widow and daughters of
the late Marmaduke Splurge, Esq., railroad-director and real-estate
broker, fondled and hated each other. Mrs. Marmaduke was a
well-preserved woman, stylish, worldly-minded, and weak. Miss
Josephine, her eldest, was handsome, patronizing, _passee_, and a
sentimental fool; Miss Adelaide, who came next, was handsome,
eccentric, malicious, and sly; and Miss Madelin