"Yes, I remember the fire-bell that pealed out numbers, and people looked in little books that they kept in their pockets to see in what district the fire was. Nora used to take me to a place down in Fourteenth Street where I fed goats and chickens through the fence, and there was a house on Broadway a little above Union Square that stood in a high-fenced garden where we used to feed the peacocks.
"But now the streets seem so much gayer and better lighted at night, and then it is easier to get about; there are so many street-cars instead of the slow, jolting busses, and the elevated railroad over there on Sixth Avenue is almost like flying. Though I'm very sorry there is to be a new opera-house so far uptown in the place of the dear old Academy, for I suppose the first of a thing must always seem the best because it is the first," and Poppea's first night at the opera again came before her, but this time there was more pleasure than pain in the memory.
Was it possible that she had been too sensitive? The people by whom she was surrounded seemed to make her one of themselves without question, and yet, coming from Quality Hill as many of them did, they must all know.
"It is not simply the growth of the city that appals me," she heard Miss Emmy's voice say as if from a distance. "Formerly, society was one; you knew your friends well, their houses and their coachmen in the distance. We who entertained did it to give our friends pleasure to the best of our ability. Now people are beginning to entertain to outvie, and this bidding for guests and the game of chance, where the victory is to the purse if it is only used with a certain degree of discretion, is drawing strangers to our social midst, and presto, society is no longer one but many, and we shall soon be driven by the crowd from our houses to entertain in hotels.
"Look at this!" and Miss Emmy tossed a couple of cards into Poppea's lap. One was the ordinary engraved card of a formal afternoon reception announcing that Mrs. John Sellers and the Misses Sellers would be at home on January the twenty-fourth, from four to seven. The second card bore simply the name of Mrs. M. E. Wilson, the address on both cards being the same.
"I do not see anything amiss about these cards," said Poppea, examining them carefully.
"Not in the cards, but in the facts back of them. Maria Wilson, one of the best known of the old set, has a large house, well furnished, but her husband's means have been decreasing ever since the Tweed Ring panic ten years ago. The Sellers are from Minneapolis, rich, ambitious, and their daughters decently educated, but as a family in a social sense positively unknown. Maria Wilson has rented them her house for the winter, herself included, for an enormous price. It is at their reception in her house where she is to stand sponsor for them, and if it is a success, it shows that society in New York is no longer able to stand upon its own resources. It is the entering wedge, for as soon as we cease to know personally those we invite, one must have police in dress suits to see that the strangers that come do not steal the spoons."
"How do you know all this, Aunty dear?" asked Poppea, a bewildered expression crossing her face as she began to wonder if the social fabric could possibly be woven of other than the silk and fair colors in which it presented itself to her.
"Know? Maria Wilson came here to luncheon to-day and not only told me the scheme, but asked me to receive at her reception (as she called it) and bring you to sing 'in a perfectly friendly way,' which, of course, means without pay. I'm quite through with it all, and then, besides, dear child, I'm very tired; lately I only seem to breathe an inch at a time when I'm in a close room. I must get away and be myself for a little, even though it is a rather poor thing to be, I'm afraid.
"Now as to this trip abroad—I want to see England in May and then go to the continent for two months, and you must go with me, Poppea."