le more polished, than that of his
soberer mates; indeed the only department of life in which he failed to
shine was the making of sufficient money to live upon. Luckily he had
no responsibilities; his father and his twin brother had died when he
was yet a boy, and his mother, whose only noteworthy achievement had
been the naming of her twin sons Marquis de Lafayette and Lorenzo de
Medici Randall, had supported herself and educated her child by making
coats up to the very day of her death. She was wont to say plaintively,
"I'm afraid the faculties was too much divided up between my twins. L.
D. M. is awful talented, but I guess M. D. L. would 'a' ben the
practical one if he'd 'a' lived."

"L. D. M. was practical enough to get the richest girl in the village,"
replied Mrs. Robinson.

"Yes," sighed his mother, "there it is again; if the twins could 'a'
married Aurelia Sawyer, 't would 'a' been all right. L. D. M. was
talented 'nough to GET Reely's money, but M. D. L. would 'a' ben
practical 'nough to have KEP' it."

Aurelia's share of the modest Sawyer property had been put into one
thing after another by the handsome and luckless Lorenzo de Medici. He
had a graceful and poetic way of making an investment for each new son
and daughter that blessed their union. "A birthday present for our
child, Aurelia," he would say,--"a little nest-egg for the future;" but
Aurelia once remarked in a moment of bitterness that the hen never
lived that could sit on those eggs and hatch anything out of them.

Miranda and Jane had virtually washed their hands of Aurelia when she
married Lorenzo de Medici Randall. Having exhausted the resources of
Riverboro and its immediate vicinity, the unfortunate couple had moved
on and on in a steadily decreasing scale of prosperity until they had
reached Temperance, where they had settled down and invited fate to do
its worst, an invitation which was promptly accepted. The maiden
sisters at home wrote to Aurelia two or three times a year, and sent
modest but serviceable presents to the children at Christmas, but
refused to assist L. D. M. with the regular expenses of his rapidly
growing family. His last investment, made shortly before the birth of
Miranda (named in a lively hope of favors which never came), was a
small farm two miles from Temperance. Aurelia managed this herself, and
so it proved a home at least, and a place for the unsuccessful Lorenzo
to die and to be buried from, a duty somewhat