guessed between them, they could manage it, as he was not the readiest with arguments or decision, in matters where the odds of logic were so decidedly on the other side. Yes, Skates must be brushed up, and persuaded to go to the city with his family, board them at a hotel or boarding-house, and then engage himself in some employment which would furnish spending money—money was to be made so easy in the city. And then it would be so much more respectable than to burrow in the country, where one never was heard of, and shoemake for a living! She herself would introduce them into the first society, and bestow favours of that important kind upon them in such profusion, a lifetime would not be long enough to cancel the debt of gratitude they would owe her!
Katy and Sophronia “cut and dried” the whole affair, while Sophronia sat in the rocking-chair with her mits on, and fanned her self; and Katy ran about as if she had been put upon an extra pair of springs in every limb, to wait upon her. When it was all ready and propped up on all sides with invincible arguments, Mr. Skates was cautiously and warily “towed in,” to become the lion in the scheme; while Sophronia and her cousin worked vigorously at the long arm, till all obstacles were finally thrust out of the way. Indeed, such had been the silent effect of Sophronia’s “continual dropping” about gentility and respectability, even upon a mind so slowly perceptive, and so absolutely common-place as Mr. Skates’s, that the difficulty of gaining him over to their side, was far less formidable than the ambitious cousins had anticipated. To the unconcealed surprise and consternation of all his neighbours and friends, and in the very face of remonstrance, and forebodings of ruin, Mr. Skates did let his house and shop, and consent to emigrate upon uncertainties, to the great city—the great city, which stood out in alto relievo before the vision of his wife, like the veritable Paradise. To his praise, however, be it spoken, it was not without many inward misgivings, and hours of almost tearful reluctance, that he started upon such a wildgoose chase; and if his wife, who was the polestar of his being, though now dangerously out of her true position, had not been on the wing, fluttering up almost out of his sight in the track of her foolish ambition, the peaceful scenes that had always encir-
