h Delury, mentally and physically a colorless sort of
an individual, who, for want of sufficient intellect to make an honest
living, passed his time going to seed with the thousand or so acres of
land belonging to him and his maiden sisters, Hetty, Prudence, and
Martha, three women who walked as stiff as they talked, although they
never were known to discuss any subject other than the Delury family.

When Daisy's proposition was made known to them they tried to faint, but
were too stiff to fall over, and were obliged to content themselves with
gasping out:

"What! Daisy Dingee marry our brother, the head of the Delury family!"

But it was the first idea that had ever entered the brother's head, and
he clung to it with a parent's affection for his first born. In a few
months Mr. and Mrs. Monmouth Delury set out for Paris with that
proverbial speed with which Americans betake themselves to the French
capital when occasion offers. They found it a much pleasanter place than
Bricksburg. Delury improved rapidly and Daisy fell quite in love with
him, made her will in his favor, contracted the typhoid fever and died.

Whereupon the really disconsolate widower sent for his three sisters to
join him. They had but one objection to going, that was to part company
with the dear old homestead, but they overcame it the day after
receiving Monmouth's letter, which happened to be a Friday, and took the
Saturday's steamer.

To confess the truth, the Delurys had been so land-poor that their spare
aristocratic figures were rather the result of necessity than
inclination. Six months of Paris life under the benign protection of
Dingee's round million made different women of them. It was wonderful
what a metamorphosis Parisian dressmakers and restaurateurs effected in
their figures. They became round and plump. They stopped talking about
Bricksburg, signed themselves the Misses Delury of New York, enrolled
themselves as patrons of art, gave elegant dinners, and in a very short
time set up pretensions to being the leaders of the American colony.

But remorseless fate was at their heels. _Figaro_ unearthed the secret
of old Dingee's million, and the Delurys suddenly found themselves the
sensation of Paris, the butt of ridicule in the comic papers. Monmouth
had been in poor health for several months, and this killed him.

Dingee's million was now in the eye of the law divided up among his
three sisters, but fate willed it otherwise, for th