ke one of them from the life of this lady,
whose chief misfortune was in being rich.

Mrs. Caldwell's brow was clouded. It was never, for a very long
time, free from, clouds, for it seemed as if all sources of worry
and vexation were on the increase; and, to make matters worse,
patience was assuredly on the decline. Little things, once scarcely
observed, now give sharp annoyance, there being rarely any
discrimination and whether they were of accident, neglect, or
wilfulness.

"Phoebe!" she called, fretfully.

The voice of her daughter answered, half-indifferently, from the
next room.

"Why don't you come when I call you?" Anger now mingled with
fretfulness.

The face of a girl in her seventeenth year, on which sat no very
amiable expression, was presented at the door.

"Is that your opera cloak lying across the chair, and partly on the
floor?"

Phoebe, without answering, crossed the room, and catching up the
garment with as little carefulness as if it had been an old shawl
threw it across her arm, and was retiring, when her mother said,
sharply,--

"Just see how you are rumpling that cloak! What do you mean?"

"I'm not hurting the cloak, mother," answered Phoebe, coolly. Then,
with a shade of reproof, she added, "You fret yourself for nothing."

"Do you call it nothing to abuse an elegant garment like that?"
demanded Mrs. Caldwell. "To throw it upon the floor, and tumble it
about as if it were an old rag?"

"All of which, mother mine, I have not done." And the girl tossed
her head with an air of light indifference.

"Don't talk to me in that way, Phoebe! I'll not suffer it. You are
forgetting yourself." The mother spoke with a sternness of manner
that caused her daughter to remain silent. As they stood looking at
each other, Mrs. Caldwell said, in a changed voice,--

"What is that on your front tooth?"

"A speck of something, I don't know what; I noticed it only
yesterday."

Mrs. Caldwell crossed the room hastily, with a disturbed manner,
and catching hold of Phoebe's arm, drew her to a window.

"Let me see!" and she looked narrowly at the tooth, "Decay, as I
live!" The last sentence was uttered in a tone of alarm. "You must
go to the dentist immediately. This is dreadful! If your teeth are
beginning to fail now, you'll not have one left in your head by the
time you're twenty-five."

"It's only a speck," said Phoebe, evincing little concern.

"A speck! I And do you know what a speck means?" dem