"I cannot without your Uncle Bratley's permission. He is my trustee. Go
to him, my dear son."

I went to him very unwillingly. My father and I had always as much as
possible ignored the Bratley connection. They live in a part of New York
where self-respect does not allow me to be seen. They are engaged in
avocations connected with the feeding of the lower classes. My father
had always required that the females of their families should call on
my mother on days when she was not at home to our own set, and at hours
when they were not likely to be detected. None of them, I am happy to
say, were ever seen at our balls or our dinners.

I nerved myself, and penetrated to that Ultima Thule where Mr. Bratley
resides. His house already, at that early hour of two, smelt vigorously
of dinner. Nothing but the urgency of my business could have induced me
to brave these odors of plain roast and boiled.

A mob of red-faced children rushed to see me as I entered, and I heard
one of them shouting up the stairs,--

"Oh, pa! there's a stiffy waiting to see you."

The phrase was new to me. I looked for a mirror, to see whether any
inaccuracy in my toilet might have suggested it.

Positively there was no mirror in the _salon_.

Instead of it, there were nothing but distressingly bright pictures by
artists who had had the bad taste to paint raw Nature just as they saw
it.