ladies had gone upstairs long ago.

All conversations led Mrs. Lancaster into the past, the girls could
almost have reconstructed those long-ago, prosperous years, from
hearing her tell of them.

"--Papa fairly glared at the man," she was saying presently, won to
an old memory by the chance meeting of an old friend to-night, "I
can see his face this day! I said, 'Why, papa, I'd JUST as soon have
these rooms!' But, no. Papa had paid for the best, and he was going
to have the best--"

"That was Papa!" laughed his daughters.

"That was Papa!" his widow smiled and sighed. "Well. The first thing
I knew, there was the proprietor,--you may imagine! Papa says, 'Will
you kindly tell me why I have to bring my wife, a delicate, refined
Southern woman--'"

"And he said beautiful, too, Ma!"

Mrs. Lancaster laughed mildly.

"Poor papa! He was so proud of my looks! 'Will you tell me,' he
says, 'why I have to put my wife into rooms like these?' 'Sir,' the
landlord says, 'I have only one better suite--'"

"Bridal suite, he said, Ma!"

"Yes, he did. The regular bridal suite. I wasn't a bride then, that