Those who go in for show and extravagance are not the best
Americans--the Americans whom you and I believe in. Sometimes I get
discouraged when I stop to think, and now I shall have you to keep me
steadfast to our faith."
"Yes, Wilbur. And how far from here are we to live?"
"Oh, a mile or more. On some side street where the land is cheap and the
rent low. What do we care for that, Selma mia?"
CHAPTER II.
Shortly before Selma Littleton took up her abode in New York, Miss
Florence, or, as she was familiarly known, Miss Flossy Price, was an
inhabitant of a New Jersey city. Her father was a second cousin of
Morton Price, whose family at that time was socially conspicuous in
fashionable New York society. Not aggressively conspicuous, as ultra
fashionable people are to-day, by dint of frequent newspaper
advertisement, but in consequence of elegant, conservative
respectability, fortified by and cushioned on a huge income. In the
early seventies to know the Morton Prices was a social passport, and by
no means every one socially ambitious knew them. Morton Price's
great-grandfather had been a peddler, his grandfather a tea merchant,
his father a tea merchant and bank organizer, and he himself did nothing
mercantile, but was a director in diverse institutions, representing
trusts or philantrophy, and was regarded by many, including himself, as
the embodiment of ornamental and admirable citizenship.
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