At last he said, "Lillie, I have done almost every thing you ever asked; but this one thing I cannot do,--it is a matter of principle. I never drink wine, never have it on my table, never give it, because I have pledged myself not to do it."
"Now, John, here is some more of your Quixotism, isn't it?"
"Well, Lillie, I suppose you will cal it so," said John; "but listen to me patiently. My father and I labored for a long time to root out drinking from our village at Spindlewood. It seemed, for the time, as if it would be the destruction of every thing there. The fact was, there was rum in every family; the parents took it daily, the children learned to love and long after it, by seeing the parents, and drinking little sweetened remains at the bottoms of tumblers. There were, every year, families broken up and destroyed, and fine fel ows going to the very devil, with this thing; and so we made a movement to form a temperance society. I paid lecturers, and finally lectured myself. At last they said to me: 'It's all very wel for you rich people, that have twice as fine houses and twice as many pleasures as we poor folks, to pick on us for having a little something comfortable to drink in our houses. If we could afford your fine nice wines, and al that, we wouldn't drink whiskey. You must al have your wine on the table; whiskey is the poor man's wine.'"
"I think," said Lillie, "they were abominably impertinent to talk so to you. I should have told them so."
"Perhaps they thought I was impertinent in talking to them about their private affairs," said John; "but I will tel you what I said to them.
I said, 'My good fel ows, I will clear my house and table of wine, if you will clear yours of rum.' On this agreement I formed a temperance society; my father and I put our names at the head of the list, and we got every man and boy in Spindlewood. It was a complete victory; and, since then, there hasn't been a more temperate, thrifty set of people in these United States."
"Didn't your mother object?"
"My mother! no, indeed; I wish you could have known my mother. It was no smal sacrifice to her and father. Not that they cared a penny for the wine itself; but the poetry and hospitality of the thing, the fine old cheery associations connected with it, were a real sacrifice. But when we told my mother how it was, she never hesitated a moment. All our cel ar of fine old wines was sent round as presents to hospitals, except a little that we keep for sickness."
"Well, really!" said Lillie, in a dry, cool tone, "I suppose it was very good of you, perfectly saint-like and al that; but it does seem a great pity. Why couldn't these people take care of themselves? I don't see why you should go on denying yourself, just to keep them in the ways of virtue."
"Oh, it's no self-denial now! I'm quite used to it," said John, cheerily. "I am young and strong, and just as wel as I can be, and don't need wine; in fact, I never think of it. The Fergusons, who are with us in the Spindlewood business, took just the same view of it, and did just as we did; and the Wilcoxes joined us; in fact, al the good old families of our set came into it."
"Well, couldn't you, just while the Follingsbees are here, do differently?"
"No, Lillie; there's my pledge, you see. No; it's really impossible."
Lillie frowned and looked disconsolate.
"John, I really do think you are selfish; you don't seem to have any consideration for me at al . It's going to make it so disagreeable and uncomfortable for me. The Follingsbees are accustomed to wine every day. I'm perfectly ashamed not to give it to them."
"Do 'em good to fast awhile, then," said John, laughing like a hard-hearted monster. "You'll see they won't suffer materially.
Bridget makes splendid coffee."
"It's a shame to laugh at what troubles me, John. The Follingsbees are my friends, and of course I want to treat them handsomely."
"We will treat them just as handsomely as we treat ourselves," said John, "and mortal man or woman ought not to ask more."
"I don't care," said Lillie, after a pause. "I hate al these moral movements and society questions. They are always in the way of people's having a good time; and I believe the world would wag just as wel as it does, if nobody had ever thought of them. People will call you a real muff, John."
"How very terrible!" said John, laughing. "What shall I do if I am called a muff? and what a jol y little Mrs. Muff you will be!" he said, pinching her cheek.
"You needn't laugh, John," said Lillie, pouting. "You don't know how things look in fashionable circles. The Fol ingsbees are in the very highest circle. They have lived in Paris, and been invited by the Emperor."
"I haven't much opinion of Americans who live in Paris and are invited by the Emperor," said John. "But, be that as it may, I shall do the best I can for them, and Mr. Young says, 'angels could no more;' so, good-by, puss: I must go to my office; and don't let's talk about this any more."
And John put on his cap and squared his broad shoulders, and, marching off with a resolute stride, went to his office, and had a most uncomfortable morning of it. You see, my dear friends, that though Nature has set the seal of sovereignty on man, in broad shoulders and bushy beard; though he fortify and incase himself in rough overcoats and heavy boots, and walk with a dashing air, and whistle like a freeman, we all know it is not an easy thing to wage a warfare with a pretty little creature in lace cap and tiny slippers, who has a faculty of looking very pensive and grieved, and making up a sad little mouth, as if her heart were breaking.
John never doubted that he was right, and in the way of duty; and yet, though he braved it out so stoutly with Lillie, and though he marched out from her presence victoriously, as it were, with drums beating and colors flying, yet there was a dismal sinking of heart under it.
"I'm right; I know I am. Of course I can't give up here; it's a matter of principle, of honor," he said over and over to himself. "Perhaps if Lillie had been here I never should have taken such a pledge; but as I have, there's no help for it."
Then he thought of what Lillie had suggested about it's looking niggardly in hospitality, and was angry with himself for feeling uncomfortable. "What do I care what Dick Follingsbee thinks?" said he to himself: "a man that I despise; a cheat, and a swindler,--a man of no principle. Lillie doesn't know the sacrifice it is to me to have such people in my house at all. Hang it al ! I wish Lillie was a little more like the women I've been used to,--like Grace and Rose and my mother. But, poor thing, I oughtn't to blame her, after all, for her unfortunate bringing up. But it's so nice to be with women that can understand the grounds you go on. A man never wants to fight a woman. I'd rather give up, hook and line, and let Lillie have her own way in every thing. But then it won't do; a fellow must stop somewhere. Wel , I'll make it up in being a model of civility to these confounded people that I wish were in the Red Sea. Let's see, I'll ask Lillie if she don't want to give a party for them when they come. By George! she shal have every thing her own way there,--send to New York for the supper, turn the house topsy-turvy, illuminate the grounds, and do any thing else she can think of. Yes, yes, she shal have _carte blanche_ for every thing!"
Al which John told Mrs. Lillie when he returned to dinner and found her enacting the depressed wife in a most becoming lace cap and wrapper that made her look like a suffering angel; and the treaty was sealed with many kisses.
"You shal have _carte blanche_, dearest," he said, "for every thing but what we were speaking of; and that will content you, won't it?"
And Lillie, with lingering pensiveness, very graciously acknowledged that it would; and seemed so touchingly resigned, and made such a merit of her resignation, that John told her she was an angel; in fact, he had a sort of indistinct remorseful feeling that he was a sort of cruel monster to deny her any thing. Lillie had sense enough to see when she could do a thing, and when she couldn't. She had given up the case when John went out in the morning, and so accepted the treaty of peace with a good degree of cheerfulness; and she was soon busy discussing the matter. "You see, we've been invited everywhere, and haven't given any thing," she said; "and this will do up our social obligations to everybody here. And then we can show off our rooms; they real y are made to give parties in."
"Yes, so they are," said John, delighted to see her smile again; "they seem adapted to that, and I don't doubt you'll make a brilliant affair of it, Lillie."
"Trust me for that, John," said Lillie. "I'll show the Fol ingsbees that something can be done here in Springdale as wel as in New York."
And so the great question was settled.
CHAPTER XV.
_THE FOLLINGSBEES ARRIVE_.
Next week the Follingsbees alighted, so to speak, from a cloud of glory. They came in their own carriage, and with their own horses; all in silk and silver, purple and fine linen, "with rings on their fingers and bel s on their toes," as the old song has it. We pause to caution our readers that this last clause is to be interpreted metaphorical y.
[Illustration: THE FOLLINGSBEES.]
Springdale stood astonished. The quiet, respectable old town had not seen any thing like it for many a long day; the ostlers at the hotel talked of it; the boys fol owed the carriage, and hung on the slats of the fence to see the party alight, and said to one another in their artless vocabulary, "Gol y! ain't it bul y?"
There was Mr. Dick Fol ingsbee, with a pair of waxed, tow-colored moustaches like the French emperor's, and ever so much longer. He was a little, thin, light-colored man, with a yel ow complexion and sandy hair; who, with the appendages aforesaid, looked like some kind of large insect, with very long _antennae_. There was Mrs.
Fol ingsbee,--a tall, handsome, dark-eyed, dark-haired, dashing woman, French dressed from the tip of her lace parasol to the toe of her boot. There was Mademoisel e Therese, the French maid, an inexpressibly fine lady; and there was _la petite_ Marie, Mrs.
Fol ingsbee's three-year-old hopeful, a lean, bright-eyed little thing, with a great scarlet bow on her back that made her look like a walking butterfly. On the whole, the tableau of arrival was so impressive, that Bridget and Annie, Rosa and al the kitchen cabinet, were in a breathless state of excitement.
"How do I find you, _ma chere_?" said Mrs. Follingsbee, folding Lillie rapturously to her breast. "I've been just dying to see you! How lovely every thing looks! Oh, _ciel_! how like dear Paris!" she said, as she was conducted into the parlor, and sunk upon the sofa.
"Pretty wel done, too, for America!" said Mr. Fol ingsbee, gazing round, and settling his col ar. Mr. Follingsbee was one of the class of returned travellers who always speak condescendingly of any thing American; as, "so-so," or "tolerable," or "pretty fair,"--a considerateness which goes a long way towards keeping up the spirits of the country.
"I say, Dick," said his lady, "have you seen to the bags and wraps?"
"Al right, madam."
"And my basket of medicines and the books?"
"O.K.," replied Dick, sententiously.
"Oh! how often must I tel you not to use those odious slang terms?"
said his wife, reprovingly.
"Oh! Mrs. John Seymour knows _me_ of old," said Mr. Fol ingsbee, winking facetiously at Lillie. "We've had many a jol y lark together; haven't we, Lill?"
"Certainly we have," said Lillie, affably. "But come, darling," she added to Mrs. Fol ingsbee, "don't you want to be shown your room?"
"Go it, then, my dearie; and I'll toddle up with the fol-de-rols and what-you-may-cal s," said the incorrigible Dick. "There, wife, Mrs.
John Seymour shal go first, so that you shan't be jealous of her and me. You know we came pretty near being in interesting relations ourselves at one time; didn't we, now?" he said with another wink.
It is said that a thorough-paced naturalist can reconstruct a whole animal from one specimen bone. In like manner, we imagine that, from these few words of dialogue, our expert readers can reconstruct Mr.
and Mrs. Follingsbee: he, vulgar, shallow, sharp, keen at a bargain, and utterly without scruples; with a sort of hilarious, animal good nature that was in a state of constant ebullition. He was, as Richard Baxter said of a better man, "always in that state of hilarity that another would be in when he hath taken a cup too much."
Dick Follingsbee began life as a peddler. He was now reputed to be master of untold wealth, kept a yacht and race-horses, ran his own theatre, and patronized the whole world and creation in general with a jocular freedom. Mrs. Follingsbee had been a country girl, with smal early advantages, but considerable ambition. She had married Dick Fol ingsbee, and helped him up in the world, as a clever, ambitious woman may. The last few years she had been spending in Paris, improving her mind and manners in reading Dumas' and Madame George Sand's novels, and availing herself of such outskirt advantages of the court of the Tuileries as industrious, pains-taking Americans, not embarrassed by self-respect, may command.
Mrs. Fol ingsbee, like many another of our republicans who besieged the purlieus of the late empire, felt that a residence near the court, at a time when every thing good and decent in France was hiding in obscure corners, and every thing _parvenu_ was wide awake and active, entitled her to speak as one having authority concerning French character, French manners and customs. This lady assumed the sentimental literary _role_. She was always cultivating herself in her own way; that is to say, she was assiduous in what she cal ed keeping up her French.
In the opinion of many of her class of thinkers, French is the key of the kingdom of heaven; and, of course, it is worth one's while to sell all that one has to be possessed of it. Mrs. Fol ingsbee had not been in the least backward to do this; but, as to getting the golden key, she had not succeeded. She had formed the acquaintance of many disreputable people; she had read French novels and French plays such as no wel -bred French woman would suffer in her family; she had lost such innocence and purity of mind as she had to lose, and, after al , had _not_ got the French language.
However, there are losses that do not trouble the subject of them, because they bring insensibility. Just as Mrs. Follingsbee's ear was not delicate enough to perceive that her rapid and confident French was not Parisian, so also her conscience and moral sense were not delicate enough to know that she had spent her labor for "that which was not bread." She had only succeeded in acquiring such an air that, on a careless survey, she might have been taken for one of the _demi-monde_ of Paris; while secretly she imagined herself the fascinating heroine of a French romance.
The friendship between Mrs. Follingsbee and Lillie was of the most impassioned nature; though, as both of them were women of a good solid perception in regard to their own material interests, there were excel ent reasons on both sides for this enthusiasm.
Notwithstanding the immense wealth of the Fol ingsbees, there were circles to which Mrs. Fol ingsbee found it difficult to be admitted.
With the usual human perversity, these, of course, became exactly the ones, and the only ones, she particularly cared for. Her ambition was to pass beyond the ranks of the "shoddy" aristocracy to those of the old-established families. Now, the Seymours, the Fergusons, and the Wilcoxes were families of this sort; and none of them had ever cared to conceal the fact, that they did not intend to know the Fol ingsbees. The marriage of Lillie into the Seymour family was the opening of a door; and Mrs. Fol ingsbee had been at Lillie's feet during her Newport campaign. On the other hand, Lillie, having taken the sense of the situation at Springdale, had cast her thoughts forward like a discreet young woman, and perceived in advance of her a very dul domestic winter, enlivened only by reading-circles and such slow tea-parties as unsophisticated Springdale found agreeable. The idea of a long visit to the New-York alhambra of the Follingsbees in the winter, with balls, parties, unlimited opera-boxes, was not a thing to be disregarded; and so, when Mrs. Fol ingsbee "_ma chered_"
Lillie, Lillie "my deared" Mrs. Fol ingsbee: and the pair are to be seen at this blessed moment sitting with their arms tenderly round each other's waists on a _causeuse_ in Mrs. Follingsbee's dressing-room.
"You don't know, _mignonne_," said Mrs. Follingsbee, "how perfectly _ravissante_ these apartments are! I'm so glad poor Charlie did them so wel for you. I laid my commands on him, poor fel ow!"
"Pray, how does your affair with him get on?" said Lillie.
"O dearest! you've no conception what a trial it is to me to keep him in the bounds of reason. He has such struggles of mind about that stupid wife of his. Think of it, my dear! a man like Charlie Ferrola, all poetry, romance, ideality, tied to a woman who thinks of nothing but her children's teeth and bowels, and turns the whole house into a nursery! Oh, I've no patience with such people."
"Well, poor fel ow! it's a pity he ever got married," said Lillie.
"Well, it would be al wel enough if this sort of woman ever would be reasonable; but they won't. They don't in the least comprehend the necessities of genius. They want to yoke Pegasus to a cart, you see.
Now, I understand Charlie perfectly. I could give him that which he needs. I appreciate him. I make a bower of peace and enjoyment for him, where his artistic nature finds the repose it craves."
"And she pitches into him about you," said Lillie, not slow to perceive the true literal rendering of al this.
"Of course, _ma chere_,--tears him, rends him, lacerates his soul; sometimes he comes to me in the most dreadful states. Real y, dear, I have apprehended something quite awful! I shouldn't in the least be surprised if he should blow his brains out!"
And Mrs. Follingsbee sighed deeply, gave a glance at herself in an opposite mirror, and smoothed down a bow pensively, as the prima donna at the grand opera general y does when her lover is getting ready to stab himself.
"Oh! I don't think he's going to kill himself," said Mrs. Lillie, who, it must be understood, was secretly somewhat sceptical about the power of her friend's charms, and looked on this little French romance with the eye of an outsider: "never you believe that, dearest. These men make dreadful tearings, and shocking eyes and mouths; but they take pretty good care to keep in the world, after al . You see, if a man's dead, there's an end of al things; and I fancy they think of that before they quite come to any thing decisive."
"_Chere etourdie_," said Mrs. Fol ingsbee, regarding Lillie with a pensive smile: "you are just your old self, I see; you are now at the height of your power,--'_jeune Madame, un mari qui vous adore_,' ready to put all things under your feet. How can you feel for a worn, lonely heart like mine, that sighs for congeniality?"
"Bless me, now," said Lillie, briskly; "you don't tel me that you're going to be so silly as to get in love with Charlie yourself! It's all wel enough to keep these fel ows on the tragic high ropes; but, if a woman fal s in love herself, there's an end of her power. And, darling, just think of it: you wouldn't have married that creature if you could; he's poor as a rat, and always will be; these desperately interesting fellows always are. Now you have money without end; and of course you have position; and your husband is a man you can get any thing in the world out of."
"Oh! as to that, I don't complain of Dick," said Mrs. Follingsbee:
"he's coarse and vulgar, to be sure, but he never stands in my way, and I never stand in his; and, as you say, he's free about money. But still, darling, sometimes it seems to me such a weary thing to live without sympathy of soul! A marriage without congeniality, _mon Dieu_, what is it? And then the harsh, cold laws of human society prevent any relief. They forbid natures that are made for each other from being to each other what they can be."
"You mean that people will talk about you," said Lillie. "Wel , I assure you, dearest, they _will_ talk awful y, if you are not very careful. I say this to you frankly, as your friend, you know."
"Ah, _ma petite_! you don't need to tel me that. I _am_ careful,"
said Mrs. Follingsbee. "I am always lecturing Charlie, and showing him that we must keep up _les convenances_; but is it not hard on us poor women to lead always this repressed, secretive life?"
"What made you marry Mr. Fol ingsbee?" said Lillie, with apparent artlessness.
"Darling, I was but a child. I was ignorant of the mysteries of my own nature, of my capabilities. As Charlie said to me the other day, we never learn what we are till some congenial soul unlocks the secret door of our hearts. The fact is, dearest, that American society, with its strait-laced, puritanical notions, bears terribly hard on woman's heart. Poor Charlie! he is no less one of the victims of society."
"Oh, nonsense!" said Lillie. "You take it too much to heart. You mustn't mind all these men say. They are always being desperate and tragic. Charlie has talked just so to me, time and time again. I understand it all. He talked exactly so to me when he came to Newport last summer. You must take matters easy, my dear,--you, with your beauty, and your style, and your money. Why, you can lead all New York captive! Forty fel ows like Charlie are not worth spoiling one's dinner for. Come, cheer up; positively I shan't let you be blue, _ma reine_. Let me ring for your maid to dress you for dinner. _Au revoir_."
The fact was, that Mrs. Lillie, having formerly set down this lovely Charlie on the list of her own adorers, had small sympathy with the sentimental romance of her friend.
"What a fool she makes of herself!" she thought, as she contemplated her own sylph-like figure and wonderful freshness of complexion in the glass. "Don't I know Charlie Ferrola? he wants her to get him into fashionable life, and knows the way to do it. To think of that stout, middle-aged party imagining that Charlie Ferrola's going to die for her charms! it's too funny! How stout the dear old thing does get, to be sure!"
[Illustration: MR. CHARLIE FERROLA.]
It will be observed here that our dear Lillie did not want for perspicacity. There is nothing so absolutely clear-sighted, in certain directions, as selfishness. Entire want of sympathy with others clears up one's vision astonishingly, and enables us to see al the weak points and ridiculous places of our neighbors in the most accurate manner possible.
As to Mr. Charlie Ferrola, our Lillie was certainly in the right in respect to him. He was one of those blossoms of male humanity that seem as expressly designed by nature for the ornamentation of ladies'
boudoirs, as an Italian greyhound: he had precisely the same graceful, shivery adaptation to live by petting and caresses. His tastes were all so exquisite that it was the most difficult thing in the world to keep him out of misery a moment. He was in a chronic state of disgust with something or other in our lower world from morning till night.
His profession was nominal y that of architecture and landscape gardening; but, in point of fact, consisted in telling certain rich, _blase_, stupid, fashionable people how they could quickest get rid of their money. He ruled despotical y in the Follingsbee halls: he bought and rejected pictures and jewelry, ordered and sent off furniture, with the air of an absolute master; amusing himself meanwhile with running a French romance with the handsome mistress of the establishment. As a consequence, he had not only opportunities for much quiet feathering of his own nest, but the _eclat_ of always having the use of the Fol ingsbees' carriages, horses, and opera-boxes, and being the acknowledged and supreme head of fashionable dictation. Ladies sometimes pul caps for such charming individuals, as we have seen in the case of Mrs. Follingsbee and Lillie.
For it is not to be supposed that Mrs. Fol ingsbee, though she had assumed the gushing style with her young friend, wanted spirit or perception on her part. Her darling Lillie had left a nettle in her bosom which rankled there.
"The vanity of these thin, light, watery blondes!" she said to herself, as she looked into her own great dark eyes in the mirror,--"thinking Charlie Ferrola cares for her! I know just what he thinks of _her_, thank heaven! Poor thing! Don't you think Mrs. John Seymour has gone off astonishingly since her marriage?" she said to Therese.
"_Mon Dieu, madame, q'oui_," said the obedient tire-woman, scraping the very back of her throat in her zeal. "Madame Seymour has the real American _maigreur_. These thin women, madame, they have no substance; there is noting to them. For young girl, they are charming; but, as woman, they are just noting at al . Now, you will see, madame, what I tel you. In a year or two, people shal ask, 'Was she ever handsome?'
But _you_, madame, you come to your prime like great rose! Oh, dere is no comparison of you to Mrs. John Seymour!"
And Therese found her words highly acceptable, after the manner of al her tribe, who prophesy smooth things unto their mistresses.
It may be imagined that the entertaining of Dick Fol ingsbee was no smal strain on the conjugal endurance of our faithful John; but he was on duty, and endured without flinching that gentleman's free and easy jokes and patronizing civilities.
"I do wish, darling, you'd teach that creature not to call you
'Lillie' in that abominably free manner," he said to his wife, the first day, after dinner.
"Mercy on us, John! what can I do? Al the world knows that Dick Fol ingsbee's an oddity; and everybody agrees to take what he says for what it's worth. If I should go to putting on any airs, he'd behave ten times worse than he does: the only way is, to pass it over quietly, and not to seem to notice any thing he says or does. My way is, to smile, and look gracious, and act as if I hadn't heard any thing but what is perfectly proper."
"It's a tremendous infliction, Lillie!"
"Poor man! is it?" said Lillie, putting her arm round his neck, and stroking his whiskers. "Wel , now, he's a good man to bear it so well, so he is; and they shan't plague him long. But, John, you must confess Mrs. Fol ingsbee is nice: poor woman! she is mortified with the way Dick will go on; but she can't do any thing with him."
"Yes, I can get on with her," said John. In fact, John was one of the men so loyal to women that his path of virtue in regard to them always ran down hill. Mrs. Fol ingsbee was handsome, and had a gift in language, and some considerable tact in adapting herself to her society; and, as she put forth al her powers to win his admiration, she succeeded.
Grace had done her part to assist John in his hospitable intents, by securing the prompt co-operation of the Fergusons. The very first evening after their arrival, old Mrs. Ferguson, with Letitia and Rose, called, not formally but socially, as had always been the custom of the two families. Dick Fol ingsbee was out, enjoying an evening cigar,--a circumstance on which John secretly congratulated himself as a favorable feature in the case. He felt instinctively a sort of uneasy responsibility for his guests; and, judging the Fergusons by himself, felt that their cal was in some sort an act of self-abnegation on his account; and he was anxious to make it as easy as possible. Mrs. Fol ingsbee was presentable, so he thought; but he dreaded the irrepressible Dick, and had much the same feeling about him that one has on presenting a pet spaniel or pointer in a lady's parlor,--there was no answering for what he might say or do.
The Fergusons were disposed to make themselves most amiable to Mrs.
Fol ingsbee; and, with this intent. Miss Letitia started the subject of her Parisian experiences, as being probably one where she would feel herself especial y at home. Mrs. Fol ingsbee of course expanded in rapturous description, and was quite clever and interesting.
"You must feel quite a difference between that country and this, in regard to facilities of living," said Miss Letitia.
"Ah, indeed! do I not?" said Mrs. Fol ingsbee, casting up her eyes.
"Life here in America is in a state of perfect disorganization."
"We are a young people here, madam," said John. "We haven't had time to organize the smal er conveniences of life."
"Yes, that's what I mean," said Mrs. Fol ingsbee. "Now, you men don't feel it so very much; but it bears hard on us poor women. Life here in America is perfect slavery to women,--a perfect dead grind. You see there's no career at al for a married woman in this country, as there is in France. Marriage there opens a brilliant prospect before a girl: it introduces her to the world; it gives her wings. In America, it is clipping her wings, chaining her down, shutting her up,--no more gayety, no more admiration; nothing but cradles and cribs, and bibs and tuckers, little narrowing, wearing, domestic cares, hard, vulgar domestic slaveries: and so our women lose their bloom and health and freshness, and are moped to death."
"I can't see the thing in that light, Mrs. Follingsbee," said old Mrs.
Ferguson. "I don't understand this modern talk. I am sure, for one, I can say I have had al the career I wanted ever since I married. You know, dear, when one begins to have children, one's heart goes into them: we find nothing hard that we do for the dear little things. I've heard that the Parisian ladies never nurse their o