eastern shore, of whom my
Uncle James married. Perhaps you are distantly related?"

Mrs. Brooks was perfectly aware that her visitor was of unknown Western
origin, and a poor but clever protege of the rich banker; but she was
one of a certain class of American women who, in the midst of a fierce
democracy, are more or less cat-like conservators of family pride and
lineage, and more or less felinely inconsistent and treacherous to
republican principles. Bly, who had just settled in his mind to send
her the rent anonymously--as a weekly valentine--recovered himself and
his spirits in his usual boyish fashion.

"I am afraid, Mrs. Brooks," he said gayly, "I cannot lay claim to any
distinguished relationship, even to that 'Nelly Bly' who, you remember,
'winked her eye when she went to sleep.'" He stopped in consternation.
The terrible conviction flashed upon him that this quotation from a
popular negro-minstrel song could not possibly be remembered by a lady
as refined as his hostess, or even known to her superior son. The
conviction was intensified by Mrs. Brooks rising with a smileless face,
slightly shedding the possible vulgarity with a shake of her shawl, and
remarking that she would show him her son's room, led the way upstairs
to the apartment recently vacated by the perfect Tappington.

Preceded by the same distant flutter of unseen skirts in the passage
which he had first noticed on entering the drawing-room, and which
evidently did not proceed from his companion, whose self-composed
cerements would have repressed any such indecorous agitation, Mr. Bly
stepped timidly into the room. It was a very pretty apartment,
suggesting the same touches of tasteful refinement in its furniture and
appointments, and withal so feminine in its neatness and regularity,
that, conscious of his frontier habits and experience, he felt at once
repulsively incongruous. "I cannot expect, Mr. Bly," said Mrs. Brooks
resignedly, "that you can share my son's extreme sensitiveness to
disorder and irregularity; but I must beg you to avoid as much as
possible disturbing the arrangement of the book-shelves, which, you
observe, comprise his books of serious reference, the Biblical
commentaries, and the sermons which were his habitual study. I must
beg you to exercise the same care in reference to the valuable
offerings from his Sabbath-school scholars which are upon the mantel.
The embroidered book-marker, the gift of the young ladies of h