“Did you ever see any thing so perfectly characteristic?” said Mrs. Follingsbee, looking around her as if she were going to faint.

“This woman drives Charlie perfectly wild, because she has no appreciation of high art.  Now, I sent her photographs of Michel Angelo’s ‘Moses,’ and ‘Night and Morning;’ and I really wish you would see where she hung them,—­away in yonder dark corner!”

“I think myself they are enough to scare the owls,” said Lillie, after a moment’s contemplation.

“But, my dear, you know they are the thing,” said Mrs. Follingsbee:  “people never like such things at first, and one must get used to high art before one forms a taste for it.  The thing with her is, she has no docility.  She does not try to enter into Charlie’s tastes.”

The woman with “no docility” entered at this moment,—­a little snow-drop of a creature, with a pale, pure, Madonna face, and that sad air of hopeless firmness which is seen unhappily in the faces of so many women.

“I had to bring baby down,” she said.  “I have no nurse to-day, and he has been threatened with croup.”

[Illustration:  “I had to bring baby down.”]

“The dear little fellow!” said Mrs. Follingsbee, with officious graciousness.  “So glad you brought him down; come to his aunty?” she inquired lovingly, as the little fellow shrank away, and regarded her with round, astonished eyes.  “Why will you not come to my next reception, Mrs. Ferrola?” she added.  “You make yourself quite a stranger to us.  You ought to give yourself some variety.”

“The fact is, Mrs. Follingsbee,” said Mrs. Ferrola, “receptions in New York generally begin about my bed-time; and, if I should spend the night out, I should have no strength to give to my children the next day.”

“But, my dear, you ought to have some amusement.”

“My children amuse me, if you will believe it,” said Mrs. Ferrola, with a remarkably quiet smile.

Mrs. Follingsbee was not quite sure whether this was meant to be sarcastic or not.  She answered, however, “Well! your husband will come, at all events.”

“You may be quite sure of that,” said Mrs. Ferrola, with the same quietness.

“Well!” said Mrs. Follingsbee, rising, with patronizing cheerfulness, “delighted to see you doing so well; and, if it is pleasant, I will send the carriage round to take you a drive in the park this afternoon.  Good-morning.”

And, like a rustling cloud of silks and satins and perfumes, she bent down and kissed the baby, and swept from the apartment.

Mrs. Ferrola, with a movement that seemed involuntary, wiped the baby’s cheek with her handkerchief, and, folding it closer to her bosom, looked up as if asking patience where patience is to be found for the asking.

“There!  I didn’t I tell you?” said Mrs. Follingsbee when she came out; “just one of those provoking, meek, obstinate, impracticable creatures, with no adaptation in her.”