ter. There were four other children,
patterns of quiet, plodding conservatism, but--such is the irony of
fate--the youngest, prettiest, and his favorite, was an independent,
opinionated young woman, who seemed to turn a deaf ear to paternal and
maternal advice of safest New Jersey type. In her father's words, she
had no reverence for any thing or any body, which was approximately
true, for she did not hesitate to speak disrespectfully even of the head
of the house in New York.

"Poppa," she said one day, "Cousin Morton doesn't care for any of us a
little bit. I know what you're going to say," she added; "that he sends
you two turkeys every Thanksgiving. The last were terribly tough. I'm
sure he thinks that we never see turkeys here in New Jersey, and that he
considers us poor relations and that we live in a hole. If one of us
should call on him, I know it would distress him awfully. He's right in
thinking that this is a hole. Nothing ever happens here, and when I
marry I intend to live in New York."

This was when she was seventeen. Her father was greatly shocked,
especially as he suspected in his secret soul that the tirade was true
in substance. He had been the recipient of Thanksgiving turkeys for
nearly twenty years on the plea that they had been grown on the donor's
farm in Westchester county, and he had seen fit to invite his
fellow-directors annually to dine off one of them as a modest notice
that he was on friendly terms with his aristocratic New York cousin. But
in all these twenty years turkeys had been the only medium of
intercourse between them. David Price, on the few occasions when he had
visited New York, had not found it convenient to call. Once he had
walked by on the other side of Fifth avenue and looked at the house, but
shyness and the thought that he had no evening clothes in his valise had
restrained him from ringing the doorbell.

"You do your cousin Morton great injustice--great injustice, Florence,"
he answered. "He never forgets to send the turkeys, and as to the rest
of your speech, I have only to say that it is very disrespectful and
very foolish. The next time I go to New York I will take you to call on
your cousins."

"And what would I say to them? No thank you, poppa." The young woman
shook her head decisively, and then she added, "I'm not going to call on
them, until I'm fit to. There!"

The ambiguity of this remark gave Mr. Price the opportunity to say that,
in view of her immediat