Cousin Eleanor smiled a little as she contemplated Honora, who sat, fascinated, gazing out of the window at novel scenes.  There was a colour in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes.  They had reached Madison Square.  Madison Square, on a bright morning in late September, seen for the first time by an ambitious young lady who had never been out of St. Louis!  The trimly appointed vehicles, the high-stepping horses, the glittering shops, the well-dressed women and well-groomed men—­all had an esprit de corps which she found inspiring.  On such a morning, and amidst such a scene, she felt that there was no limit to the possibilities of life.

Until this year, Cousin Eleanor had been a conservative in the matter of hotels, when she had yielded to Edith’s entreaties to go to one of the “new ones.”  Hotels, indeed, that revolutionized transient existence.  This one, on the Avenue, had a giant in a long blue livery coat who opened their carriage door, and a hall in yellow and black onyx, and maids and valets.  After breakfast, when Honora sat down to write to Aunt Mary, she described the suite of rooms in which they lived,—­the brass beds, the electric night lamps, the mahogany French furniture, the heavy carpets, and even the white-tiled bathroom.  There was a marvellous arrangement in the walls with which Edith was never tired of playing, a circular plate covered with legends of every conceivable want, from a newspaper to a needle and thread and a Scotch whiskey highball.

At breakfast, more stimulants—­of a mental nature, of course.  Solomon in all his glory had never broken eggs in such a dining room.  It had onyx pillars, too, and gilt furniture, and table after table of the whitest napery stretched from one end of it to the other.  The glass and silver was all of a special pattern, and an obsequious waiter handed Honora a menu in a silver frame, with a handle.  One side of the menu was in English, and the other in French.  All around them were well-dressed, well-fed, prosperous-looking people, talking and laughing in subdued tones as they ate.  And Honora had a strange feeling of being one of them, of being as rich and prosperous as they, of coming into a long-deferred inheritance.

The mad excitement of that day in New York is a faint memory now, so much has Honora lived since then.  We descendants of rigid Puritans, of pioneer tobacco-planters and frontiersmen, take naturally to a luxury such as the world has never seen—­as our right.  We have abolished kings, in order that as many of us as possible may abide in palaces.  In one day Honora forgot the seventeen years spent in the “little house under the hill,” as though these had never been.  Cousin Eleanor, with a delightful sense of wrong-doing, yielded to the temptation to adorn her; and the saleswomen, who knew Mrs. Hanbury, made indiscreet-remarks.  Such a figure and such a face, and just enough of height!  Two new gowns were ordered, to be tried on at Sutcliffe, and as many hats, and an ulster, and heaven knows what else.  Memory fails.