One cannot be fastidious about
minor matters when one has no choice."

The visit had spun out nearly three minutes, now. Both ladies rose with
grave dignity, conferred upon Laura a formal invitation to call, aid then
retired from the conference. Laura remained in the drawing-room and left
them to pilot themselves out of the house--an inhospitable thing,
it seemed to her, but then she was following her instructions. She
stood, steeped in reverie, a while, and then she said:

"I think I could always enjoy icebergs--as scenery but not as company."

Still, she knew these two people by reputation, and was aware that they
were not ice-bergs when they were in their own waters and amid their
legitimate surroundings, but on the contrary were people to be respected
for their stainless characters and esteemed for their social virtues and
their benevolent impulses. She thought it a pity that they had to be
such changed and dreary creatures on occasions of state.

The first call Laura received from the other extremity of the Washington
aristocracy followed close upon the heels of the one we have just been
describing. The callers this time were the Hon. Mrs. Oliver Higgins,
the Hon. Mrs. Patrique Oreille (pronounced O-relay,) Miss Bridget
(pronounced Breezhay) Oreille, Mrs. Peter Gashly, Miss Gashly, and Miss
Emmeline Gashly.

The three carriages arrived at the same moment from different directions.
They were new and wonderfully shiny, and the brasses on the harness were
highly polished and bore complicated monograms. There were showy coats
of arms, too, with Latin mottoes. The coachmen and footmen were clad in
bright new livery, of striking colors, and they had black rosettes with
shaving-brushes projecting above them, on the sides of their stove-pipe
hats.

When the visitors swept into the drawing-room they filled the place with
a suffocating sweetness procured at the perfumer's. Their costumes,
as to architecture, were the latest fashion intensified; they were
rainbow-hued; they were hung with jewels--chiefly diamonds. It would
have been plain to any eye that it had cost something to upholster these
women.

The Hon. Mrs. Oliver Higgins was the wife of a delegate from a distant
territory--a gentleman who had kept the principal "saloon," and sold the
best whiskey in the principal village in his wilderness, and so, of
course, was recognized as the first man of his commonwealth and its
fittest representative.

He w