she feels beyond her reach."

"Pity," said Mrs. Castleton almost sorrowfully. "She was such a good
little creature. How prosperity spoils some people."

And so Mrs. Fairchild traveled and came home again.

They had been to Paris, and seen more things and places than they
could remember, and did not understand what they could remember, and
were afraid of telling what they had seen, lest they should
mispronounce names, whose spelling was beyond their most ambitious
flights.

They had gone to the ends of the earth to be in society at home. But
ignorant they went and ignorant they returned.

"Edward and Fanny shall know every thing," said Mrs. Fairchild, and
teachers without end were engaged for the young Fairchilds, who, to
their parents' great delight were not only chatting in "unknown
tongues," but becoming quite intimate with the little Ashfields and
other baby sprigs of nobility.

"Who is that pretty boy dancing with your Helen, Mrs. Bankhead?" asked
some one at a child's party.

"Young Fairchild," was the reply.

"Fairchild! What, a son of that overdressed little woman you used to
laugh at so at the opera?" said the other.

"The same," replied Mrs. Bankhead laughing.

"And here's an incipient flirtation between your girl and her boy,"
continued the other archly.

"Well, there's no leveler like Education. The true democrat after
all," she pursued.

"Certainly," replied Mrs. Bankhead. "Intelligence puts us all on a
footing. What other distinction can or should we have?"

"I doubt whether Mrs. Fairchild thinks so," replied her friend.

"Indeed you are mistaken," replied Mrs. Bankhead earnestly. "She would
not perhaps express it in those words: but her humble reverence for
education is quite touching. They are giving these children every
possible advantage, and in a few years, when they are grown up," she
continued, laughing, "We mothers will be very glad to admit the young
Fairchilds in society, even if they must bring the mother with them."

"I suppose so," said the other. "And old people are inoffensive even
if they are ignorant. Old age is in itself a claim to respect."

"True enough," returned Mrs. Bankhead; "and when you see them
engrossed and happy in the success of their children, you forgive them
a good deal. That is the reward of such people."

"They have fought through a good deal of mortification though to
attain it," rejoined the other. "I wonder whether the end is worth
it?"

"Ah! th