t all these fine people
have done, and that's the way they know each other so well. All the
Americans are intimate in Paris, and then when they come back they are
all friends together."

Mr. Fairchild listened and pondered. He was as tired as his wife with
nothing to do; and moreover deeply mortified, though he said less
about it, at not being admitted among those with whom he had no tastes
or associations in common, and he consented.

The house was shut up and the Fairchilds were off.

* * * * *

"Who are those Fairchilds," asked somebody in Paris, "that one sees
every where, where money can gain admittance?"

"Oh, I don't know," replied Miss Rutherford. "They traveled down the
Rhine with us last summer, and were our perfect torment. We could not
shake them off."

"What sort of people are they?" was the next question.

"Ignorant past belief: but that would not so much matter if she were
not such a spiteful little creature. I declare I heard more gossip and
ill-natured stories from her about Americans in Paris than I ever
heard in all the rest of my life put together."

"And rich?"

"Yes, I suppose so--for they spent absurdly. They are just those
ignorant, vulgar people that one only meets in traveling, and that
make us blush for our country and countrymen. Such people should not
have passports."

"Fairchild," said Mrs. Castleton. "The name is familiar to me. Oh,
now I remember. But they can't be the same. The Fairchilds I knew were
people in humble circumstances. They lived in ---- street."

"Yes. I dare say they are the very people," replied Miss Rutherford.
"He has made money rapidly within a few years."

"But she was the best little creature I ever knew," persisted Mrs.
Castleton. "My baby was taken ill while we were in the country
boarding at the same house, and this Mrs. Fairchild came to me at
once, and helped me get a warm bath, and watched and nursed the child
with me as if it had been her own. I remember I was very grateful for
her excessive kindness and attention."

"Well, I dare say," replied Miss Rutherford. "But that was when she
was poor, and, as you say, humble, Mrs. Castleton. Very probably she
may have been kind-hearted originally. She does love her children
dearly. She has that merit; but now that she is rich, and wants to be
fine and fashionable, and don't know how to manage it, and can't
succeed, you never knew any body so spiteful and jealous as she is of
all those