d not overeat itself,
and did keep its mouth shut. However, Mr. Port's obvious rotundity
destroyed what little point was to be found in this meagre witticism;
and, if it had not, the fact is well-known in Philadelphia that New
Yorkers, being descended not from an honorable Quaker ancestry but from
successful operations in Wall Street, are not to be held accountable for
their unfortunate but unavoidable manifestations of a frivolity at once
inelegant and indecorous.

In regard to his summers, Mr. Port--after a month spent for the good of
his liver in taking the waters at the White Sulphur--of course went to
Narragan-sett Pier. It may be accepted as an incontrovertible truth that
a Philadelphian of a certain class who missed coming to the Pier
for August would refuse to believe, for that year at least, in the
alternation of the four seasons; while an enforced absence from that
damply delightful watering-place for two successive summers very
probably would lead to a rejection of the entire Copernican system.

II.

"Poor dear mamma and I did not have a harsh word for years, Uncle
Hutchinson," Miss Lee explained, in the course of the somewhat animated
discussion that arose in consequence of Mr. Port's declaration that
a part of their summer would be passed, in accordance with his usual
custom, at the White Sulphur, and of Dorothy's declaration that she did
not want to go there. This, her first summer in America, was the third
summer after Mrs. Lee's translation; and since Dorothy had come into
colors again she naturally wanted to make the most of them. "No, not
a single harsh word did we ever have. We always agreed perfectly, you
know; or if mamma thought differently at first she always ended by
seeing that my view of the matter was the right one. The only serious
difference that I remember since I was quite a little girl was that
last autumn in Paris; when I had everything so perfectly arranged for a
delightful winter in St. Petersburg, and when mamma was completely set
in her own mind that we must go to the south of France. Her cough was
getting very bad then, you know, and she said that a winter in Russia
certainly would kill her. I don't think it would have killed her, at
least not especially; but the doctor backed mamma up--and said some
horrid things to me in his polite French way--and declared that St.
Petersburg was not even to be thought of.

"And so, when I found that they were both against me that way, o