"Neither!" answered indignant Tommy, with flashing eyes and glowing cheeks. "They had pure water, ice water. They don't have any wine or brandy in that house nor in our firm, I can tell you, sir."
"Good for you, Tommy—stand up for your principles. Well, what came next after you were all toasted and ice-watered? Is Mrs. Hastings, senior, in town? Dear me, how long is it since she went away?"
"It's pretty near three years. No, she isn't in town. She's in feeble health, and they're going out there to Chicago to see her, the whole tribe of them. They take the four o'clock Express, and we're all going to the cars with them, about a dozen carriages. It's time they were on hand, too. I had to come down to the store after a package that was left here, and there they are this minute; and so you see, sir, you can't see either Mr. Stephens or Mr. Mallery in a twinkling. I ride in the eighth carriage." And at this point Tommy's shining boots bounded away.
After the visit to Chicago was concluded, interspersed by several pleasant side trips, the bridal party separated one bright June morning at the Cleveland depot, Pliny and his wife preparing to settle down in their new home, while Mr. and Mrs. Mallery went on to New York. Theodore had been there perhaps a dozen times since he took that first surreptitious trip with Mr. Hastings, but in these visits he had always been a hurried business man, with little leisure or taste for retrospect. Now, however, it was different, and traversing the streets with his wife leaning on his arm, he had a fancy for going backward, and painting pictures from the past for her amusement. The hotel to which he had escorted Mr. Hastings on that day had advanced with the advancing tide, and was just now in the very zenith of its prosperity. Thither he found his way, and led Dora up the broad steps and down the splendid halls, and finally booked his name, "Theodore S. Mallery and wife," and tried in vain, while he issued his orders with the air of one long accustomed to the giving of orders, to conceive of himself and that ridiculous little wretch who squeezed in among the gentlemen on that long ago morning to discover, if perchance he could, what his traveling companion's name might be, as one and the same.
"Now, I am going to show you some of the wretchedness that abounds in this elegant city," he said to his wife one morning as he dismissed the carriage after an hour's exciting drive, and proposed a walk. "It is a remarkable city in that respect. I am never struck with the two extremes of humanity as I am when in New York."
"I was thinking only this morning," Dora answered, "how very few wretched people I had met in the streets."
"Wait a bit; see if in ten minutes from this time you are not almost led to conclude that there is nothing left in this world but wretchedness and filth and abomination."
They turned suddenly around the corner of a pleasant street, and as if they were among the shifting scenes of a panorama, the entire foreground had changed. Wretchedness! that word no more described the horrors of their surroundings than could any other that came to Dora's mind. The scene beggared description. "Swarms of horrors!" she called them in speaking of the people afterward. Just now she clung silent and half frightened to her husband's arm. He, too, became silent, and appeared occupied solely in guarding his wife and shielding her from disagreeable collisions. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation of delight:
"Look, Dora! this is the building of which I have read but have never seen. I have not had time to come so far down before this. Can you imagine a more delightful oasis in this desert of filth and pollution?"