vent himself upon. "If I had known that making the house over was
going to be such a restraint on a fellow, I would never have done it."

"Oh, well! never mind that now," said Grace. "Your house will get
rubbed down by and by, and the new gloss taken off; and so will
your wife, and you will all be cosey and easy as an old shoe. Young
mistresses, you see, have nerves all over their house at first. They
tremble at every dent in their furniture, and wink when you come near
it, as if you were going to hit it a blow; but that wears off in time,
and they learn to take it easy."

John looked relieved; but after a minute broke out again:--

"I say, Gracie, Lillie has gone and invited the Simpkinses and the
Follingsbees here this fall. Just think of it!"

"Well, I suppose you expect your wife to have the right of inviting
her company," said Grace.

"But, you know, Gracie, they are not at all our sort of folks," said
John. "None of our set would ever think of visiting them, and it'll
seem so odd to see them here. Follingsbee is a vulgar sharper, who has
made his money out of our country by dishonest contracts during the
war. I don't know much about his wife. Lillie says she is her intimate
friend."

"Oh, well, John! we must get over it in the quietest way possible. It
wouldn't be handsome not to make the agreeable to your wife's company;
and if you don't like the quality of it, why, you are a good deal
nearer to her than any one else can be,--you can gradually detach her
from them."

"Then you think I ought to put a good face on their coming?" said
John, with a sigh of relief.

"Oh, certainly! of course. What else can you do? It's one of the
things to be expected with a young wife."

"And do you think the Wilcoxes and the Fergusons and the rest of our
set will be civil?"

"Why, of course they will," said Grace. "Rose and Letitia will,
certainly; and the others will follow suit. After all, John, perhaps
we old families, as we call ourselves, are a little bit pharisaical
and self-righteous, and too apt to thank God that we are not as other
men are. It'll do us good to be obliged to come a little out of our
crinkles."

"It isn't any old family feeling about Follingsbee," said John. "But
I feel that that man deserves to be in State's prison much more than
many a poor dog that is there now."

"And that may be true of many another, even in the selectest circles
of good society," said Grace; "but we are not called on to