Sylvie,"--she turned back to her volume of "London Society," much
and mixedly reconciled in her thoughts to two things that occurred
to her at once,--one of them adding itself to the other as
manifestly in the same remarkable order of providence; "that
tip-out" from the basket-phæton, and the new white frill-trimmed
polonaise that Miss Sylvie would put on, so needlessly, this
afternoon, in spite of her remonstrance that the laundress had just
left without warning, and there was no knowing when they should ever
find another.

"There is certainly a fate in these matters," she said to herself,
complacently. "_One_ thing always follows another."

Mrs. Argenter was apt to make to herself a "House that Jack built"
out of her providences. She had always a little string of them to
rehearse in every history; from the malt that lay in the house, and
the rat that ate the malt, up to the priest all shaven and shorn,
that married the man that kissed the maid--and so on, all the way
back again. She counted them up as they went along. "There was the
overturn," she would say, by and by "and there was Rodney
Sherrett's call because of that, and then his sister's because no
doubt he asked her, and then their both coming together; and there
was your pretty white polonaise, you know, the day they did come;
and there was"--Mrs. Argenter has not counted up to that yet.
Perhaps it may be a long while before she will so readily count it
in.

It had turned out a hot day; one of those days in the nineties, when
if you once hear from the thermometer, or in any way have the fact
forcibly brought home to you, you relinquish all idea of exertion