o you, but it is absolutely exceptional; it will never be
pandemic," said Mrs. Megilp, who was fond of picking up little
knowing terms of speech, and delivering herself of them at her
earliest subsequent convenience.

"'Never' is the only really imposing word in the language," said
Asenath, innocently. "I don't believe either you or I quite
understand it. But I fancy everything begins with exceptions, and
happens in spots,--from the settling of a continent to the doing up
of back-hair in new fashions. I shouldn't wonder if it were an
excellent way to take life, to make it as exceptional as you can, in
all unexceptionable directions. To help to thicken up the good
spots till the world gets confluent with them. I suppose that is
what is meant by making one's mark in it, don't you?"

Mrs. Megilp headed about, as if in the turn the talk had taken she
suddenly found no thoroughfare; and asked Asenath if she had been to
hear Rubinstein.

Of course it was not in talk only, that--up-stairs or
down-stairs--the exceptional household found its difficulties. It
was not all pleasant arranging and contriving for an undeviating
"living happy ever after."

There were days now and then when the baby fretted, or lost her nap,
and somebody had to hold her nearly all the time; when the door-bell
rang as if with a continuous and concerted intent of malice. Stormy
Mondays happened when clothes would not dry, entailing Tuesdays and
Wednesdays and Thursdays of interrupted and irregular service
elsewhere.

If Asenath Scherman's real life had been anywhere but in her home
and with her children,--if it had consisted in being dressed in
train-skirt and panier, lace sleeves and bracelets, with hair in a
result of hour-long elaboration, at twelve o'clock; or of being out
making calls in high street toilet from that time until two; or if
her strength had had to be reserved for and repaired after evening
parties; if family care had been merely the constantly increasing
friction which the whole study of the art of living must be to
reduce and evade, that the real purpose and desire might sweep on
unimpeded,--she would soon have given up her experiment in despair.

Or if, on the other part, there had been a household below,
struggling continually to escape the necessity it was paid to
meet, that it might get to its own separate interests and
"privileges,"--if it had been utterly foreign and unsympathetic in
idea and perception, only watchful th