t
striking the eye; and the lady is served in the most observant style by
one of those ancient house servants whose dignity is inseparably
connected with the dignity of the house and springs from it. No new
comer to wealth and place can be served so. The whole air of everything
in the room is easy, refined, leisurely, assured, and comfortable. The
coffee is capital; and the meal, simple enough, is very delicate in its
arrangement.

Only the two ladies are at the table; one behind the coffee urn, and
the other near her. The mistress of the house has a sensible, agreeable
face, and well-bred manner; the other lady is the one who has been so
jealously discussed and described in another family. As Miss Julia
described her, there she sits, in a morning dress which lends her
figure no attraction whatever. And--her figure can do without it. As
the question is asked her about New York, her eye goes over to the
glittering western shore.

"I like this a great deal better than the city," she added to her
former words.

"O, of course, the brick and stone!" answered her hostess. "I did not
mean _that_. I mean, how do you like _us?_"

"Mrs. Wishart, I like _you_ very much," said the girl with a certain
sweet spirit.

"Thank you! but I did not mean that either. Do you like no one but me?"

"I do not know anybody else."

"You have seen plenty of people."

"I do not know them, though. Not a bit. One thing I do not like. People
talk so on the surface of things."

"Do you want them to go deep in an evening party?"

"It is not only in evening parties. If you want me to say what I think,
Mrs. Wishart. It is the same always, if people come for morning calls,
or if we go to them, or if we see them in the evening; people talk
about nothing; nothing they care about."

"Nothing _you_ care about."

"They do not seem to care about it either."

"Why do you suppose they talk it then?" Mrs. Wishart asked, amused.

"It seems to be a form they must go through," Lois said, laughing a
little. "Perhaps they enjoy it, but they do not seem as if they did.
And they laugh so incessantly,--some of them,--at what has no fun in
it. That seems to be a form too; but laughing for form's sake seems to
me hard work."

"My dear, do you want people to be always serious?"

"How do you mean, 'serious'?"

"Do you want them to be always going 'deep' into things?"

"N-o, perhaps not; but I would like them to be always in earnest."

"My dear! What a