ss consisted, since he held no
office either in church or State, but the old lady evidently believed
in her heart that a cousin who was a big man down in New York was
nearly as good as an uncle who was a deacon up in New Hampshire.

Now it happened that John Willard, the Cousin John of Mrs. Newton's
gossip, was spending the summer at Lebanon Springs, and at the close of
his vacation he started to drive home through the beautiful region once
the scene of the anti-renters' conflict with the old patroons. He
stopped to see the Shaker villages, and then drove on among the rich
farms, taking great pleasure in explaining to his town-bred wife the
difference between wheat and rye as it stood in the shock, feeling for
once the superiority of one whose early life has been passed in the
country. He happened to remember that he had a cousin over in Weston,
and though he had not seen her for many years, he proposed to turn
aside and eat one dinner with old Farmer Newton and his wife.

And thus it happened that Cousin John Willard, and especially that Mrs.
Cousin John Willard, saw Henrietta's drawings, and heard of her
aspiration to learn to draw and paint; and thus it happened that Cousin
John, and, what is of more consequence, Mrs. Cousin John, invited the
girl to come down to New York and spend the winter with them and
develop her talent for drawing; though Mrs. Willard did not think so
much of Henrietta's developing her gift for art as that she had a fine
face, and would undoubtedly develop into a beauty under city
influences. And as Mrs. Willard had no children, and her house was
lonesome, she thought it might add to her own consequence and to the
cheerfulness of her house to have a handsome cousin under her care.
Henrietta's father was rather unwilling to let her go; he didn't see
how she could be spared from the housework; but the mother was resolved
that she should go, and go she did.

The first things that excited the country girl's wonder were not the
streets and buildings and the works of art, but the unwonted luxury of
city life. Velvet carpets, large panes of plate glass, hot and cold
water that came for the turning of a stopcock, illumination that burst
forth as by magic, mirrors that showed the whole person and
reduplicated the room--even doorbells and sliding doors, and dumb
waiters and speaking-tubes, were things that filled her with
astonishment. For weeks she felt that she had moved out of the world
into a fair