"So much the worse. Did she not let her poor mother toil away her life in a second-rate boarding-house? and she will not employ her worthy cousins who sew for me, because they are her cousins. No, I'll have nothing to do with such people as the Finleys."
"Mamma, do you mean to go to the Finleys'?"
"No, indeed; it was too impertinent of the woman to ask me. I never saw her except at Saratoga."
"Mrs. Smith, are you going to the Finleys'?"
"No; they are too ignorant and vulgar."
"But you visit the Fitzroys?"
"My dear, yot forget; Fitzroy is a junior partner of Mr. Smith."
"Oh, is he?"
"Mrs. Brown, do you go to the Finleys'?"
"No, I will not, when I can help it, visit the merely rich."
These reasons, and a hundred similar, were of course not alleged to Mrs. Finley, but veiled in the conventional "regrets," "previous engagements," &c. &c. So Mrs. Morris Finley gave her party to those for whom she did not think it worth the trouble; nor did her husband deem it worth the expense. The house was turned topsy-turvy, the servants overworked, the children made ill by surfeiting, and no one happy or grateful; the invited regarded Mrs. Finley with contempt, and the left out with resentment.
Which, we would ask, was the richest man, estimated by the hospitality exercised and enjoyed—Henry Aikin, or Morris Finley?
