o lionized! I assure you, I was cock of the walk. My dear sister,"
said the young man, "nous n'avons qu'a nous tenir; we shall be great
swells!"

Madame Munster looked at him, and her eye exhibited a slight responsive
spark. She touched her lips to a glass of wine, and then she said,
"Describe them. Give me a picture."

Felix drained his own glass. "Well, it 's in the country, among the
meadows and woods; a wild sort of place, and yet not far from here.
Only, such a road, my dear! Imagine one of the Alpine glaciers
reproduced in mud. But you will not spend much time on it, for they want
you to come and stay, once for all."

"Ah," said the Baroness, "they want me to come and stay, once for all?
Bon."

"It 's intensely rural, tremendously natural; and all overhung with
this strange white light, this far-away blue sky. There 's a big wooden
house--a kind of three-story bungalow; it looks like a magnified
Nuremberg toy. There was a gentleman there that made a speech to me
about it and called it a 'venerable mansion;' but it looks as if it had
been built last night."

"Is it handsome--is it elegant?" asked the Baroness.

Felix looked at her a moment, smiling. "It 's very clean! No splendors,
no gilding, no troops of servants; rather straight-backed chairs. But
you might eat off the floors, and you can sit down on the stairs."

"That must be a privilege. And the inhabitants are straight-backed too,
of course."

"My dear sister," said Felix, "the inhabitants are charming."

"In what style?"

"In a style of their own. How shall I describe it? It 's primitive; it
's patriarchal; it 's the ton of the golden age."

"And have they nothing golden but their ton? Are there no symptoms of
wealth?"

"I should say there was wealth without symptoms. A plain, homely way of
life: nothing for show, and very little for--what shall I call it?--for
the senses: but a great faisance, and a lot of money, out of sight,
that comes forward very quietly for subscriptions to institutions,
for repairing tenements, for paying doctor's bills; perhaps even for
portioning daughters."

"And the daughters?" Madame Munster demanded. "How many are there?"

"There are two, Charlotte and Gertrude."

"Are they pretty?"

"One of them," said Felix.

"Which is that?"

The young man was silent, looking at his sister. "Charlotte," he said at
last.

She looked at him in return. "I see. You are in love with Gertrude. They
must be Puritans to th