[CHAPTER XI.]
FURTHER CHANGES.
FROM this time forward, a coolness grew up between the two families in Myrtle Street.
Joe was very much vexed about the money. Still, he was naturally placable, and, if left to himself, would, no doubt, soon have forgotten his annoyance; but there was a skilful hand at the bellows, keeping up the fire of anger in his mind.
Mr. Van Horn was jealous of John Caswell. John was the Mordecai sitting in the gate of Myrtle Street, who had always refused to bow down to his greatness. Moreover, he had reasons of his own for disliking to have his affairs observed by any one so quick-sighted as the grave, slow-spoken carpenter. He knew that Joe had been in the habit of telling his cousin all about his business affairs; and he made up his mind that, under present circumstances, such openness would not be desirable. He therefore set himself to work, now by insinuations, now by sarcasm, and now by open abuse, to poison the mind of Joe and his wife against their relations across the road.
In this work he had an efficient coadjutor in his wife, to whom mischief-making was as her daily bread, and who, under an appearance of the greatest simplicity, and even silliness, concealed as much cunning as her grave and artful husband.
Agnes soon became distant and cold to her cousins. She ceased to run into Number Nine a dozen times a day, to borrow something, to ask help about her work, or to look at Letty's new magazine. If Letty called at Number Ten, she was received with the most chilling ceremony, or with abundant hints about people minding their own business and keeping their own place. For some time Letty persisted in going to see her cousin, in spite of this treatment; but the manner of both Joe and Agnes at last became so offensive that she had nothing to do but to stay away. Even Madge was no longer allowed to visit her cousin and thus the poor child was deprived of her greatest solace. Letty grieved deeply over the estrangement, and tried in every way to remedy it; but in vain. The more she tried, the worse the matter grew; and she was at last fain to let things take their course, hoping that time would bring Agnes to her senses.
But Letty regretted many things in her cousins' ways more than their conduct to herself. Living opposite, as she did, she could not help seeing the increased expenses of the family, the growing extravagance of Agnes's dress, the hired carriages, the late ball and theatre goings, the card and supper parties. She mourned, too, over the change in Joe's appearance. He had always been rather a sober and steady man, even in his bachelor days, and since his marriage he had become still more so; but Letty could not but notice how red his face was becoming, and how loudly he sometimes talked when he came home late in the evening.
The Alhambra, as he called his place of business, began to be noted for its good liquors and cigars, and the excellence of the free lunches it set forth on festival-days. It had a great run of custom, and people began to whisper that the sale of liquors was not the most profitable business carried on there; that back of the grand billiard-saloon on the first floor, the windows of which blazed with light at the latest hours, there was another apartment, the windows of which did not blaze with light,—which had, in fact, no windows at all, and where the visitors pursued these amusements with closed doors and were waited upon by Mr. Van Horn himself.
Meantime, Mrs. Van Horn Was getting into society, as she called it, very rapidly. Mrs. Van Horn's acquaintances were, of course, Agnes's: they belonged mostly to what was called "the fast set,"—people who made many expensive parties, played cards for money, and prided themselves on doing startling things.