expect you was goin' to get into the papers when you came away.
'_Abel Pinkham, Esquire, of Wetherford, Vermont._' It looks well,
don't it? But you might have knocked me down with a feather when I
first caught sight of them words."

"I guess I shall put on my other dress," said Mrs. Pinkham, rising,
with quite a different air from that with which she had sat down to
her morning meal. "This one looks a little out o' style, as Sarah
said, but when I got up this mornin' I was so homesick it didn't seem
to make any kind o' difference. I expect that saucy girl last night
took us to be nobodies. I'd like to leave the paper round where she
couldn't help seein' it."

"Don't take any notice of her," said Abel, in a dignified tone. "If
she can't do what you want an' be civil, we'll go somewheres else. I
wish I'd done what we talked of at first an' gone to the Astor House,
but that young man in the cars told me 't was remote from the things
we should want to see. The Astor House was the top o' everything when
I was here last, but I expected to find some changes. I want you to
have the best there is," he said, smiling at his wife as if they were
just making their wedding journey. "Come, let's be stirrin'; 't is
long past eight o'clock," and he ushered her to the door, newspaper in
hand.

II.

Later that day the guests walked up Broadway, holding themselves
erect, and feeling as if every eye was upon them. Abel Pinkham had
settled with his correspondents for the spring consignments of maple
sugar, and a round sum in bank bills was stowed away in his breast
pocket. One of the partners had been a Wetherford boy, so when there
came a renewal of interest in maple sugar, and the best confectioners
were ready to do it honor, the finest quality being at a large
premium, this partner remembered that there never was any sugar made
in Wetherford of such melting and delicious flavor as from the trees
on the old Pinkham farm. He had now made a good bit of money for
himself on this private venture, and was ready that morning to pay
Mr. Abel Pinkham cash down, and to give him a handsome order for the
next season for all he could make. Mr. Fitch was also generous in the
matter of such details as freight and packing; he was immensely polite
and kind to his old friends, and begged them to come out and stay with
him and his wife, where they lived now, in a not far distant New
Jersey town.

"No, no, sir," said Mr. Pinkham promptly. "My wife h