Stump, the short attorney, can be tolerated only so long as there are no arrivals from the city; precisely as Miss Georgiana gave the cold shoulder to your pleasantries and bon mots the very evening that young ape, Pranelle, exhibited his waxed moustache and French graces within her circle. In like manner, chaperoning Mrs. Van Waddlevurst, all embonpoint, turban, and pomp, who carries that bashful blonde, her niece, to every Rout and At Home, under her wing, as it were, and brings it about that every young fellow of ton in the room shall be presented to her, in the vain hope of eclipsing sparkling Celeste, who sways all hearts this season, is she not reproduced in sanguine Mrs. Brown—slim though she be, and with her hair put up in a rather sparse knot on the summit of her head, and the same everlasting smile upon her face, most unlike dowager Van Waddlevurst's fat dignity of chin, who has not ceased to indulge in various secret dreams of distinction, founded on her Amelia Ann's accomplishments, ever since the return of that young lady from finishing-school. Mrs. Brown, indeed, is a woman of more energy than the dowager, having been compelled, for many years, (since Brown' demise,) to battle for herself; but she drags about and placards the attractiveness of her Amelia Ann, a shame-faced girl, who seldom answers except in monosyllables, with much the same good taste that Mrs. Van W. does her Amelia.
It is only you, O sweet Mary Jones, who have not been spoiled by living in a city. It is only you who go about singing or humming one of the songs you learned long before you came to be taught those grand symphonies from the opera of the Don, which the Miss Snacks performing together draw a chorus of bravas from the throats of moustached visitors, when the season for moustached visitors has arrived. Yes, it is certainly you, pretty, lovable Mary Jones, swinging your cottage bonnet about by its blue ribbons, and glancing here and there with eyes quite as blue, and a great deal pleasanter to behold, even were a man-milliner the arbiter, who, for the first time, perceives the young gentleman seated yonder by his fish-basket on the bank, who has been looking at you all this while with so much attention, not to say pleasure, that a perch has actually, after many delightful bobs, drawn his float under the surface and become en-
