so cold?  She sent you from the table, and made you go without your breakfast, and we had ham and johnny-cake toast that morning, too.  That was long ago, and our lives are different now.  There are marble basins, with silver chains and stoppers, at Tracy Pack, and you can have a hot bath every day if you like, in a room which would not shame Caracalla himself.  And I know you will like it all, and Dolly, too; but don’t make fools of yourselves.  Nothing stamps a person as a come-up from the scum so soon as airs and ostentation.  Be quiet and modest, as if you had always lived at Tracy Park.  Imitate Squire Harrington and Mr. St. Claire.  They are the true gentlemen, and were to the manner born.  Be kind to Mrs. Crawford.  She is a lady in every sense of the word, for she comes of good New England stock.

    ’And now, good-bye.  I shall write sometimes, but not often.

    ’Your brother,

    ‘Arthur Tracy.’

CHAPTER III.

Mr. And Mrs. Frank Tracy.

Mr. Frank, in his small grocery store at Langley, was weighing out a pound of butter for the Widow Simpson, who was haggling with him about the price, when his brother’s letter was brought to him by the boy who swept his store and did errands for him.  But Frank was too busy just then to read it.  There was a circus in the village that day, and it brought the country people into the town in larger numbers than usual.  Naturally, many of them paid Frank a visit in the course of the morning, so that it was not until he went home to his dinner that be even thought of the letter, which was finally brought to his mind by his wife’s asking if there was any news.

Mrs. Frank was always inquiring for and expecting news, but she was not prepared for what this day brought her.  Neither was her husband, and when he read his brother’s letter, which he did twice to assure himself that he was not mistaken, he sat for a moment perfectly bewildered, and staring at his wife, who was putting his dinner upon the table.

‘Dolly,’ he gasped at last, when he could speak at all—­’Dolly, what do you think?  Just listen.  Arthur is going to Europe, to stay forever, perhaps, and has left us Tracy Park.  We are going there to live, and you will be as grand a lady as Mrs. Atherton, of Brier Hill; or that young girl at Collingwood.’

Dolly had a platter of ham and eggs in her hand, and she never could tell, though she often tried to do so, what prevented her from dropping the whole upon the floor.  She did spill some of the fat upon her clean tablecloth, she put the dish down so suddenly, and sinking into a chair, demanded what her husband meant.  Was he crazy, or what?

‘Not a bit of it,’ he replied, recovering himself and beginning to realize the good fortune which had come to him.  ’We are rich people, Dolly.  Read for yourself;’ and he passed her the letter, which she seemed to understand better than he had done.