When Simon took trips to New York, he “stopped” at Mr. Wimple’s, and Sally’s summer home in Hendrik was always “Aunt Phoebe’s,” as she had been taught to call Simon’s mother.

You will wonder, then, that Mr. Paul Wimple should have blushed and struggled and died in the forlorn little “Athenaeum,” and that Sally should sit down in her loneliness and “that fright of a delaine” to wait for customers that came not, when in their old friends’ house were comfortable mansions, and in their old friends’ hearts tearful kisses and welcome free as air.  But you must remember that with sudden poverty comes, often, shrinking pride, and a degree of suspicion, and high scorn of those belittled pensioners who hang upon old ties; that old age, when it is sorely beset, is not always patient, clear-sighted, and just; that, when the heart of a young girl, in Sally’s extremity, carries the helpless love that had been clad in purple, and couched in eider, and pampered with bonny cats, and served in gold, to Pride, and asks, “Stern master, what shall I do with this now?” the answer will be, “Strip it of its silken fooleries,—­let it lie on the ground, the broad bosom of its honest, hearty mother,—­teach it the wholesomeness of brown bread and cresses, fairly earned, and water from the spring,—­and let it wait on itself, and wait for the rest!” Once, when the talk at the Splurge house descended for a moment from its lofty flights to describe a few eccentric mocking circles around the Hendrik Athenaeum and Miss Wimple, Madeline said, “If you have sense or decency, be silent;—­the girl is true and brave, every way better taught than we, and prouder than she knows.  If we were truly as scornful of her as she is indifferent to us, we would let her glorious insignificance alone.”

So Miss Wimple waited in her shabby little shop and plied her needle for hire.  Her lover was a handsome fellow, with a bright, frank face, and a vigorous, agile, and graceful form; there was more than common intellect in his clear, broad brow, overhung with close clusters of brown country curls; taste was on his lips and tenderness in his eyes; his soul was full of generosity, candor, and fidelity; his every movement and attitude denoted native refinement, and in his talk he displayed an excellent understanding and remarkable cultivation; for his father had bestowed on him superior advantages of education;—­“as fine a young fellow, Sir,” that estimable old Doctor Vandyke would say, “as ever you saw.”

It was true, Simon’s travels had never reached beyond New York; but, unlike Mr. Philip Withers, he had brought home solid comforts, useful facts, wholesome sentiments, natural manners, and sensible, but modest conversation,—­instead of an astonishing variety of intellectual curiosities and intricate moral toys, whereat plain people marvelled—­as in the case of a certain ingenious Chinese puzzle, ball within ball, all save the last elaborately carved—­how the very diminutive plain one at the centre ever got in there, or ever could be got out.