icans. How you differ from the English! How is it that you catch
fortune by the hair so?"

"We are passionate and quick-witted."

"And then you repudiate with ease."

"Bah! you imitate Sydney Smith."

"I did not mean in the sense of State bonds precisely."

"I think," Osgood groaned, "that I begin to feel like a snob again.
What shall I do to be saved?"

"Go on in the groove that is making for you. I'll stand by and be the
chorus. When I hear thy plaints of misery I will let fall the tear;
but remember that 'laws determine even the fates.'"

"Bosh!"

Except a dispute between the Doctor and Osgood concerning a slouched
hat, which the Doctor would not wear, the party succeeded in starting
and arriving amicably at the Union in Saratoga. In a few hours Mrs.
Formica knew who was there. The Trees were at the Union. Mrs. Senator
Conch had taken a cottage; but the Senator himself had stopped at
Albany for a day to confer with the Governor. Old Madam Funchal of
Philadelphia was at Congress Hall, with her train, and Mrs. Romeo
Pipps Bovis and husband, from Boston. All her friends were round her;
that is, the traveling set she was in the habit of meeting; and her
spirits rose to the occasion. These particulars she detailed, in a
white muslin morning-dress, to Osgood, who, dressed in a new
cream-colored suit, lounged in the doorway of a small parlor off the
hall. He shouldered round just in time to come face to face with Lily
Tree, who was passing on the arm of Barclay Dodge. She stopped, of
course, to shake hands with Mrs. Formica, whose apparently warm kiss
fell on the edge of a braid of her chestnut hair with the weight and
coldness of a snow-flake. Her face settled into rigidity when she
turned to speak to Osgood, and, like a transparent boy, he looked,
with all the earnestness his gray eyes were capable of, straight into
hers. Aunt Formica and Barclay read a story at once upon the text his
countenance furnished; but they both made the mistake of believing
that Lily had rejected him. Lily was too much occupied in managing her
own feelings to divine Osgood's. The imperative necessity of
concealment, which all tutored women feel, governed her. She laughed a
great deal, though nobody said a witty thing, and kept her eyes going
between Mrs. Formica and Barclay with a steadiness which equaled the
movements of the wax women in the Broadway shop windows. Mr. Formica
and Dr. Black added themselves to the party, and the relief