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clattered on the cobblestones, private carriages and hacks, milk wagons and bakers' wagons, a dustman and a scissors-grinder man with his little bell.
    People jostled them, a small boy strolled by, took a long, impudent look at them, then turning his eyes to heaven said, 'Lord love us if I don't think there's something green around here.' He lowered his eyes and fixed them on Ephraim. 'Don't you see nothing green?' asked the urchin chattily.
    Ephraim frowned. 'Why no, my lad, I guess I don't know what you mean.'
    'Whee, crickey,' said the boy. 'It's greener than I thought for and it's got hayseeds on it!' He contorted his grimy visage into a prodigious wink, burst into hoots of laughter, and strolled away.
    Miranda flushed. 'I guess he meant us,' she said in a small voice.
    'Little limb of Satan,' Ephraim growled. He pulled the Van Ryn letter angrily from his pocket and consulted it. 'He says to go to the Astor House. We better get started.'
    But after they had twice asked their way and received conflicting impatient directions, Miranda was relieved when a cab drew up beside diem, and the driver said: 'You people strangers, ain't you? You want I should take you somewheres?'
    'Oh, yes, Pa, please,' said Miranda.
    'How much to go to the Astor House?' asked Ephraim cautiously.
    The broad Irish face on the box looked concerned. 'Oh, yez wouldn't be wanting to stop there, would ye, now? That's a high-falutin' place where they charge a dollar to turn around, let alone what they want for room and vittles. I'll take yez to me brother Paddy's foine little tavern on Morris Street. They'll treat you grand.'
    'I said the Astor House,' said Ephraim icily.
    The cabby shrugged his shoulders. 'Then that'll be a shilling.'
    'What!' roared Ephraim. 'Be on your way, then, you conscienceless ruffian!' and Miranda could not but agree with him, tired and bewildered as she was.
    Isaac Taylor was right, the city was full of slickers. But how did people know right off like that that they came from the country?
    It took them almost an hour to reach the Astor House because they got lost three times. But when they finally trudged up Broadway, each clutching a wicker basket, and saw between Vesey and Barclay Streets the great pile of granite that was the hotel, Miranda had the answer to her question. It wasn't only the wicker baskets, it was their clothes. No one wore a shallow round beaver like her father's, no one had a fringe of beard under the chin, or long coattails or such wide trousers. And as for the fashionable ladies who were out on Broadway for the morning shopping, their satins and cashmeres, their ruffled and plumed bonnets, no more resembled Miranda's attire than a peacock resembles a wren.
    Though most women love clothes there are not many with a real flair for them, an understanding of line and color, a swift instinctive certainty as to what will be becoming, or an ability to measure and apply the first vague indications of fashion change. Yet Miranda was one of these—though her faculty had had small scope in Greenwich—and now she suffered accordingly. She followed her father up the wide steps of the Astor House and wished passionately that she might fade into eternal invisibility before she faced the grand new cousin.
    Everything about her was wrong. Fashionable ladies did not wear fichus, or brown merino, nobody had darned cotton gloves, and alas, though the Misses Lane had done their best, the bonnet was worst of all. It was too deep and too high. Its pink ribbons and red roses were ridiculous. It looked cheap, tawdry, and just what it was, an adapted provincial imitation of a French style of four years ago.
    'Stop sidling along behind me like that,' commanded Ephraim sharply. 'Hold your head up and don't act like a scared rabbit. Ye're entering one of the marts of Mammon, and you'd better hold yourself like a God-fearing girl with nothing on her conscience.'
    'Yes, Pa,' and Miranda stiffened her spine trying hopelessly to look like