Jim came rushing in. "Where's the hundred dollars?" he inquired.
Joe laughed. "I have not received the money yet. I thought the announcement was enough for one night."
"You and Hanny'll be so stuck up there'll be no living with you," said Jim.
Hanny glanced up with a smiling face. If she had only looked that way at Lily Ludlow! But even his schoolmate was momentarily distanced by the thought of such a prize. And he remembered later on with much gratification that he could tell her to-morrow.
Miss Chrissy Ludlow had been sitting by the front window in her white gown, half expecting a caller. When Lily entered, she inquired if that little thing was the Underhill girl?
"Oh, that's the baby," and Lily giggled. "There's a young lady who goes to Rutgers—well, I suppose she isn't quite grown up, for she doesn't wear real-long dresses. And they have another brother in the country—six brothers!"
Chrissy sighed. If she only knew some way to get acquainted with the young woman. And all the brothers fairly made one green with envy.
"You keep in with them," she advised her sister. "You might as well look up in the world for your friends."
There were not many people in the street who kept a carriage. Chrissy longed ardently to know them. And she had been almost fighting for a term at Rutgers. Mr. Ludlow was a common-place man, clerk in a shoe-store round in Houston Street, and capable of doing repairs. They rented out the second floor, as they could not afford to keep the whole house. But since Chrissy had found out that they were distant connections of some Ludlows quite well off and high up in the social scale, she had felt extremely aristocratic. For a year she had been out of school, and now her mother thought she better learn dressmaking, since she was so "handy." She meant to get married at the first good opportunity.
Mr. Thackeray in England was writing about snobs during this period. He thought he found a great many in London. And even among the republican simplicity of New York he could have found some.