ther. "How do you account for it? Where did
their money come from?"

"It grew," said the St. Clair ineffably. "They were lords of the
soil."

"Oh!--But it had to be dug out, I suppose?" said Miss Macy.

"There were others to do that."

"After all," said Miss Macy, "how is money that grew any better than
money that is made? it is all made by somebody, too."

"If it is made by somebody else, it leaves your hands clean," the St.
Clair answered, with an insolence worthy of maturer years; for Miss
Macy's family had grown rich by trade. She was of a slow temper
however and did not take fire.

"My grandfather's hands were clean," she said; "yet he made his own
money. Honest hands always are clean."

"Do you suppose Miss Cardigan's were when she was handling her
cabbages?" said St Clair. "I have no doubt Miss Cardigan's house
smells of cabbages now."

"O St. Clair!" Miss Lansing said, laughing.

"I always smell them when I go past," said the other, elevating her
scornful little nose; it was a handsome nose too.

"I don't think it makes any difference," said Miss Bentley, "provided
people _have_ money, how they came by it. Money buys the same thing
for one that it does for another."

"Now, my good Bentley, that is just what it _don't_," said St. Clair,
drumming up the window-pane with the tips of her fingers.

"Why not?"

"Because!--people that have always had money know how to use it; and
people who have just come into their money _don't_ know. You can tell
the one from the other as far off as the head of the avenue."

"But what is to hinder their going to the same milliner and mantua-maker,
for instance, or the same cabinet-maker,--and buying the same things?"

"Or the same jeweller, or the same--anything? So they could if they
knew which they were."

"Which _what_ were? It is easy to tell which is a fashionable
milliner, or mantua-maker; everybody knows that."

"It don't do some people any good," said St. Clair, turning away.
"When they get in the shop they do not know what to buy; and if they
buy it they can't put it on. People that are not fashionable can't
_be_ fashionable."

I saw the glance that fell, scarcely touching, on my plain plaid
frock. I was silly enough to feel it too. I was unused to scorn. St.
Clair returned to the window, perhaps sensible that she had gone a
little too far.

"I can tell you now," she said, "what that old Miss Cardigan has got
in her house--just as well as if I saw i