t arm's-length, to enjoy my life in its appointed circle,
taking care of my income, and never--no, never!--giving any human being
the opportunity to make me a beggar again."

"Oh, mamma," Vesta said, "think of Judge Custis! Have you not made home
cold to him by this formalism? We must study men, and please them
according to their tastes, and therein lies our joy; else we are false
to the companionship God gave us to man for. Yield to your husband's
boyish-heartedness; fly with him, like the mate by the bird! He has
repented; welcome him to your love again, and stay his feet from truant
going, or he may dash down the precipice this sorrow has arrested him
before, of everlasting dissipation and the death of his noble soul!"

Vesta stood above her mother, deeply moved, deeply earnest. Her mother
stole another look at the bank check.

"Well, daughter, I will be humbugged by him if you desire it," she said,
but with slight answering emotion. "If I had my life to go over again I
would marry a business man, and let the aristocracy go. There is the
second knock at the front-door. I believe I will dress myself and go
down-stairs too."

There were two ladies in the parlor when Vesta went there--Grandmother
Tilghman and the Widow Dennis.

"Good-evening, Vesta," said the old lady, who was stone-blind, but
easily knew Vesta's footstep. "William thought you would not go to
evening service on account of Mr. Milburn's illness, so I came around to
sit till church was over, when he will take me home. But what is that I
hear in this parlor, like somebody sniffling?"

"It's me, Aunt Vesty," said the voice of Rhoda Holland from the
background.

"This is Mr. Milburn's niece, who has come here to stay with me," Vesta
said.

"Ah! then it is no Custis. The last sniffle I heard was at the ball to
Lafayette in the spring of 1781. The marquis had marched from Head of
Elk to the Bald Friars' ferry up the Susquehanna and inland among the
hills to Baltimore, and we gave him a ball which, at his request, was
turned into a clothing-party. He snuffed so much that he kept up a
sniffle all the evening, like--"

Here Rhoda's sniffle was heard again.

"Yes, that's a good imitation," said Grandmother Tilghman, "but I don't
like it."

"Did the gineral dance at the ball?" asked Rhoda. "What did he do with
his swurd? Did he dance with it outen his scibburd?"

"He danced like a gentleman," Mrs. Tilghman replied, as if she would
rather not, "and l