y were neither going to
church nor a family visiting. In the moment that he recognised this, a
revelation came to him,--the knowledge that his horizon had been very
narrow, and he felt angry that it was so. Why should those fellows be
different from him? Why should they walk the streets so knowingly, so
independently, when he knew not whither to turn his steps? Well, he was
in New York, and now he would learn. Some day some greenhorn from the
South should stand at a window and look out envying him, as he passed,
red-cravated, patent-leathered, intent on some goal. Was it not better,
after all, that circumstances had forced them thither? Had it not been
so, they might all have stayed home and stagnated. Well, thought he, it
's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and somehow, with a guilty
under-thought, he forgot to feel the natural pity for his father,
toiling guiltless in the prison of his native State.

Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad. The first sign of the
demoralisation of the provincial who comes to New York is his pride at
his insensibility to certain impressions which used to influence him at
home. First, he begins to scoff, and there is no truth in his views nor
depth in his laugh. But by and by, from mere pretending, it becomes
real. He grows callous. After that he goes to the devil very cheerfully.

No such radical emotions, however, troubled Kit's mind. She too stood at
the windows and looked down into the street. There was a sort of
complacent calm in the manner in which she viewed the girls' hats and
dresses. Many of them were really pretty, she told herself, but for the
most part they were not better than what she had had down home. There
was a sound quality in the girl's make-up that helped her to see through
the glamour of mere place and recognise worth for itself. Or it may have
been the critical faculty, which is prominent in most women, that kept
her from thinking a five-cent cheese-cloth any better in New York than
it was at home. She had a certain self-respect which made her value
herself and her own traditions higher than her brother did his.

When later in the evening the porter who had been kind to them came in
and was introduced as Mr. William Thomas, young as she was, she took his
open admiration for her with more coolness than Joe exhibited when
Thomas offered to show him something of the town some day or night.

Mr. Thomas was a loquacious little man with a confident air b