omptly.

"We lack polish--even Walter Butler and Guy Johnson sneer at us under
father's nose," said Ruyven. "What the devil is it in us Varicks that
set folk whispering and snickering and nudging one another? Am I
parti-colored, like an Oneida at a scalp-dance? Does Harry wear bat's
wings for ears? Are Dorothy's legs crooked, that they all stare?"

"It's your red head," observed Cecile. "The good folk think to see the
noon-sun setting in the wood--"

"Oh, tally! you always say that," snapped Ruyven.

Dorothy, leaning forward, looked at me with dreamy blue eyes that saw
beyond me.

"We are doubtless a little mad, ... as they say," she mused. "Otherwise
we seem to be like other folk. We have clothing befitting, when we
choose to wear it; we were schooled in Albany; we are people of quality,
like the other patroons; we lack nothing for servants or tenants--what
ails them all, to nudge and stare and grin when we pass?"

"Mr. Livingston says our deportment shocks all," murmured Cecile.

"The Schuylers will have none of us," added Harry, plaintively--"and I
admire them, too."

"Oh, they all conduct shamefully when I go to school in Albany," burst
out Sammy; "and I thrashed that puling young patroon, too, for he saw me
and refused my salute. But I think he will render me my bow next time."

"Do the quality not visit you here?" I asked Dorothy.

"Visit us? No, cousin. Who is to receive them? Our mother is dead."

Cecile said: "Once they did come, but Uncle Varick had that mistress of
Sir John's to sup with them and they took offence."

"Mrs. Van Cortlandt said she was a painted hussy--" began Harry.

"The Van Rensselaers left the house, vowing that Sir Lupus had used them
shamefully," added Cecile; "and Sir Lupus said: 'Tush! tush! When the
Van Rensselaers are too good for the Putnams of Tribes Hill I'll eat my
spurs!' and then he laughed till he cried."

"They never came again; nobody of quality ever came; nobody ever comes,"
said Ruyven.

"Excepting the Johnsons and the Butlers," corrected Sammy.

"And then everybody geths tight; they were here lath night and Uncle
Varick is sthill abed," said little Benny, innocently.

"Will you all hold your tongues?" cried Dorothy, fiercely. "Father said
we were not to tell anybody that Sir John and the Ormond-Butlers
visited us."

"Why not?" I asked.

Dorothy clasped both hands under her chin, rested her bare elbows on the
table, and leaned close to me, whispering c