had come to a 'Paradise of a place,' as you told me I would
find it. Yet if it pleases you to see your mother dressed like a servant
why, of course, for your sake I'll consent. But I warn you, no
skylarking with underbred people or I shall take you straight home."

This little conversation shows that Mrs. Hungerford was right when she
informed her brother on that same evening:

"We made a blunder when we allowed the Starks to join our personal
party. They fit into it about as well as a round peg in a square hole.
The woman--Well, she may be high-born and rich but I don't want our
Molly to copy her notions. She's not nice, either, to poor Miss Isobel
nor Dorothy. The result is that Miss Greatorex has grown more difficult
and 'stiff' than she was in the beginning. Such a pity when she's just
begun to get softer and more human!"

In his heart the Judge was not over-pleased by this untoward opening of
the new association, but he wouldn't admit it to her. He merely said:

"I'm sorry if you're going to let the prejudices of silly women spoil
your own vacation. Don't do it. Just remember what you often say, that
human nature is the same everywhere. We have the pride of wealth to
contend with on one hand and the pride of poverty on the other; but
beneath each sort of pride lies an honest heart. I believe it, and that
we shall yet see these two opposing elements merged in a warm
friendship. Watch for it. It takes all sorts of people to make a world
and another sort will be added, to-morrow, when Melvin joins us. Throw
in the college Prex, the millionaire financier, and surgeon Mantler, and
we shall have a miniature world of our own in our traveling mates."

"Schuyler, you haven't told me yet what part that lad Melvin is to play
in this 'world.' Why did you ask him?"

"To test him, Lu, nothing else. His mother is anxious he should make a
man of himself and isn't sure how best he can. She permitted him to take
a bugler's place on the 'Prince' because he wanted to try a sea-faring
life. Two seasons of it, even under the comfortable conditions of a
passenger steamship, has sickened him of that. He fancied he could be a
musician and has talent sufficient only to 'bugle.' Now he wants to see
the world, though he didn't dream I was to offer him a chance. She
thinks he would make a good lawyer, and so his uncle Ephraim thinks. Her
pastor thinks he ought to be a minister; and the only point upon which
all his friends and himself agr