garment, which hung about her gaunt person with antique severity of
outline; while the babies were multitudinously swathed in whatever
fragments of dress could be tied or pinned or plastered on. Their faces
were strikingly and almost ingeniously dirty, and their distractions among
the coal-heaps and cord-wood constantly added to the variety and advantage
of these effects.

"Why do their mothers let them come here?" muses Frank aloud. "Why,
because it's so safe, Cousin Lucy. At home, you know, they'd have to be
playing upon the sills of fourth-floor windows, and here they're out of
the way and can't hurt themselves. Why, Cousin Lucy, this is their park,--
their Public Garden, their Bois de Boulogne, their Cascine. And look at
their gloomy little faces! Aren't they taking their pleasure in the spirit
of the very highest fashion? I was at Newport last summer, and saw the
famous driving on the Avenue in those pony phaetons, dog-carts, and tubs,
and three-story carriages with a pair of footmen perching like storks upon
each gable, and I assure you that all those ornate and costly phantasms
(it seems to me now like a sad, sweet vision) had just the expression of
these poor children. We're taking a day's pleasure ourselves, cousin, but
nobody would know it from our looks. And has nothing but whooping-cough
happened since I've been gone?"

"Yes, we seem to be so cut off from every-day associations that I've
imagined myself a sort of tourist, and I've been to that Catholic church
over yonder, in hopes of seeing the Murillos and Raphaels--but I found it
locked up, and so I trudged back without a sight of the masterpieces. But
what's the reason that all the shops hereabouts have nothing but luxuries
for sale? The windows are perfect tropics of oranges, and lemons, and
belated bananas, and tobacco, and peanuts."