birthdays and the groom's debts, while with suspicious glances they closely search the wedding gifts for something plated. Grandaunt Lucilla and old James Baker, with blood chilled against the kindly influence of sparkling champagne or rare good sherry, had that day peered into the future with wise old eyes, and, foreseeing, had mumblingly foretold the financial ruin that was now full upon John Lawton. Of those who heard the croaking of the ancient pair the most indignant had been Nellie Douglass—bridesmaid and intimate of Letitia Lawton. She cried: "Shame," to Grandaunt Lucilla, "for prophesying evil upon one of her own blood, and the very handsomest bride the Bassetts had ever led to altar-rail and expectant groom. But then, it was just crass envy and malice that moved her, unmarried at seventy-five, to such wicked speech—ruin indeed!" And she tossed her flower-wreathed head, as she glanced about at the lavish decorations, at the newly added shelf, circling the library walls, to accommodate the many late-coming wedding gifts: "Only—only, she wished now, more than ever, that Letitia had not been a May bride, and had not wound all those lovely pearls around her slender throat! What on earth had made her so reckless? it was risky enough to say 'Yes,' without winding yourself up in pearls and saying it in May!"

But certain men who heard the prophesy looked over at the wealthy bridegroom, and, noting the dimpled, pointed chin, the wide-apart blue eyes, with their absent expression, they thought of the far-away coffee plantations that had come with the fortune they had already made into his helpless looking hands, and shook their heads, fearing old man Baker's saying might yet come true. Lawton had come to New York on a matter of business connected with those plantations, and, instead of devoting himself to that and returning at once, he fell head over heels in love and straightway married, and as his bride was of a very fair complexion and dreaded the sun, and was very fond of society and dreaded loneliness, she simply could not go to South America with him; and when once he bravely tried to go alone back to his duty, she indulged in such an hysterical outburst of temper and grief combined as did herself serious injury at the time, and ended at once and forever his personal management of the plantations.

They were both outrageously extravagant—not in a gross, flaunting way, desiring the pained humiliation of those less fortunate than themselves, but in a way that showed an almost childish ignorance of the value of money. John Lawton, Sr., had been a shrewd, far-sighted, honorable man, a hard worker, who held fast to what he earned until it could earn too. Strong and self-denying, he yet fathered a son who seemed to have been born for the express purpose of being fleeced. Honest, honorable, temperate, moral, without a single vice, possessing most of the virtues, he was nevertheless that piteous creature—the well-intentioned but unsuccessful man.

After the plantations had gently slipped away from him he did not attempt to retrench. He loved his wife; he had not the heart to deny her anything; also he remembered the hysterical outburst and a tiny, tiny little grave, and he—well, he dared not suggest even a slight change in their style of living, but he did decide that something must be found to take the place of the money-yielding coffee plantations. Hence it followed that for some years there were few salted mines, whether of gold or silver; few gushing oil-wells, located miles outside of the oil belt; few Eden-like land-booms in Southern swamps, that had not found in John Lawton an eager purchaser of shares. Some fine corner lots in the business centre of a Western city—built entirely on paper—were his last, large, losing investment. After that he dribbled away the few dollars left to him in helping to secure patents for such useless inventions as an ink-well with automatic cover that was meant to keep the ink from evaporating, but failed to do it. A dish-washing machine looked like a winner, until he found it was apt suddenly to go wrong and crush more dishes in a moment than the most impetuous Bridget would destroy in a week. And a cow-milker had lately absorbed the money that should have gone for walking boots. Each time he was deceived he was as greatly surprised as he had been on the first occasion; then, sadly gathering up his worthless shares, he tied them neatly together with pink tape, labelled them, laid them aside—and was ready to be taken in again. In all these foolish investments he was actuated solely by love for his family. There was no taint of selfishness underlying his desire to regain a lost fortune. He suffered twice to their once, since he felt every one of their privations in addition to his own. In his slow way he had come to understand that his weakness had brought about the family's downfall. He had not been strong enough to hold what he had once possessed, and even when he knew they were rushing to destruction, he had not been strong enough to put the brakes down hard. He said little—almost nothing; but there were times when his wife thought him sleeping when he sat with closed eyes thanking God for that tiny grave which held his only son, for had he lived a weakling like himself he might have carried the good old name down to no one knows what depths; while the girls, such good girls, such pretty girls they were, would doubtless marry some time, and so the name would pass, would be forgotten; and the absent look would be very marked, when his pale blue eyes opened again. The poor, tender-hearted, gullible old gentleman!

That Grandaunt Lucilla, who at their wedding feast had prophesied ruin within twenty years for the Lawtons, had lived long enough to see the seeds of extravagance sown by them take root, develop stalk and stem, and blossom forth into many mortgages—for stranger hands to gather; so, leaving her savings to that "tinkling cymbal of humanity," as she called her grandniece, Letitia Lawton, she first secured the legacy with so many legal knots and seals and witnesses and things, that it simply could not be squandered by one Lawton, nor invested by the other; and now it was to that small inheritance that they clung for their lives.

The family's position was most painful, but the girls suffered most. In the past John and Letitia had danced long and merrily, so it was but fair that they should now "pay the piper," but Sybil and Dorothy, for all their warm young blood and springy feet, danced not, for their hands were empty, and there was no one to "pay the piper" for them. Poor things, they could remember when their fine feathers had made them very fine little birds, indeed; when they had taken their walks abroad under the care of a voluble French nurse. They could remember, too, the day their pretty, ever-talkative mamma had refused to go to church with but one man on the carriage box. Then there had come a time when there was no man and no carriage and no French maid. Then flittings followed, and after each one fewer friends had followed them, and the last flitting had brought them here, to the old White house, or to Woodsedge, as Mrs. Lawton sternly commanded all to call it; and no old friends seemed likely to follow them out of the land of plenty, while it was too soon yet to know whether they would find new friends in the desert. So they could only make the best appearance possible and rush up their bedroom curtains. And as they worked, Sybil, the impetuous, with flushing cheeks, told Dorothy, who steadily turned-down and hemmed, how impossible it was for her to do anything but act; how sure she was she could act; how clearly she was going to put the case before papa. And then Dorothy wished to know how Sybil was going to get into a theatre—a really nice theatre was not so easily entered. For herself, she