Miss Brown and Ike. But they were rich people now; a turn in the wheel
had made Ike a millionaire and transformed him into Mr. Rossiter-Browne,
and with his wife and his two children, Augusta and Allen, he was doing
Europe on a grand scale, and Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, an ambitious but
well-meaning woman, had taken a violent fancy to Daisy, and had even
invited her to go home with her in June, offering to defray all her
expenses out and back if she would do so.

"And I half made up my mind to go," Daisy wrote to Bessie in May. "I
have often wished to see America, and shall never have a better chance
than this. Though not the most refined people in the world, the
Rossiter-Brownes are very nice and very kind to me. Lady June, I dare
say, would call them vulgar and second-class, and I am inclined to think
they are what their own countrymen call _shoddy_. They have not always
been rich as they are now. Indeed, Mrs. Rossiter-Browne makes no secret
of the fact that she was once poor and did her own washing, which is
very commendable in her, I am sure. By some means or other--either oil,
or pork, or the war--they have made a fortune and have come abroad to
spend it in a most princely manner. Mrs. Rossiter-Browne is
good-looking, and wears the finest diamonds at Nice, if I except some of
the Russian ladies, but her grammar is dreadful, her style of dress very
conspicuous, and her voice loud and coarse. Augusta, the daughter, is
twenty, and much better educated than her mother. She is rather pretty
and stylish, but indolent and proud. Allen, the son, is twenty-two,
tall, light-haired, good-natured, and dandified, kisses his mother night
and morning, calls her _ma_ and his father _pa_, and his sister _sis_;
drives fast horses, wears an eye-glass, carries a cane, and affects the
English drawl. _Pere_ Rossiter-Browne is a little dapper man, with a
face like a squirrel. At breakfast, which is served in their parlor, he
eats with his knife, and pours his tea into his saucer in spite of
Augusta's disgust and his wife's open protestations.

"'Now, Angeline, you shet up with your folderol,' he will say, with the
most imperturbable good humor. 'At _table dote_ I can behave with the
best of 'em, but in my own room I'm goin' to be comfortable and take
things easy like, and if I want to cool my tea in my _sasser_ I shall.
Miss McPherson don't think no less of me for that, you bet.'

"They have given me a standing invitation to breakfast wit