ed too; his peculiar, up-and-down shake of a
laugh, in which head and shoulders made the motions, as if he were a
bottle, and there were a joke inside of him which was to be well
mixed up to be thoroughly enjoyed.

"Go home to your mother, jade-hopper!" he said, when he had done;
"and tell her I'm coming round to-night, to tea, amongst your
bumble-bees and your lilies!"

XV.

WITH ALL ONE'S MIGHT.

Let the grapes be ever so sweet, and hang in plenty ever so low,
there is always a fair bunch out of reach.

Mrs. Ledwith longed, now, to go to Europe.

At any rate, she was eager to have her daughters go. But, after just
one year, to take what her Uncle Oldways had given her, in return
for her settling herself near him, and _un_settle herself, and go
off to the other side of the world! Besides, what he had given her
would not do it. That was the rub, after all. What was two thousand
a year, now-a-days? Nothing is anything, now-a-days. And it takes
everything to do almost nothing.

The Ledwiths were just as much pinched now as they were before they
ever heard from Uncle Oldways. People with unlimited powers of
expansion always are pinched; it is good for them; one of the saving
laws of nature that keeps things decently together.

Yet, in the pink room of a morning, and in the mellow-tinted
drawing-room of an evening, it was getting to be the subject
oftenest discussed. It was that to which they directed the combined
magnetism of the family will; everything was brought to bear upon it;
Bridget's going away on Monday morning, leaving the clothes in the
tubs, the strike-price of coal, and the overcharge of the grocer;
Florence's music, Helena's hopeless distress over French and German;
even Desire's listlessness and fidgets; most of all Mrs. Megilp's
plans, which were ripening towards this long coveted end. She and
Glossy really thought they should go this winter.

"It is a matter of economy now; everybody's going. The Fargo's and
the Fayerwerses, and the Hitherinyons have broken all up, and are
going out to stay indefinitely. The Fayerwerses have been saving up
these four years to get away, there are so many of them, you know;
the passage money counts, and the first travelling; but after you
_are_ over, and have found a place to settle down in,"--then
followed all the usual assertions as to cheap delights and
inestimable advantages, and emancipation from all American household
ills and miseries.

Uncle Ol