After a day or so devoted to sight-seeing, the serious business which brought her there was entered upon by Letty. Cabinet-makers were visited, upholsterers consulted, and trades-people of various kinds looked in upon, until finally, like a genuine woman, she stopped buying, simply because her money was all gone. Articles of _vertu_ were not so common in those days as now, but yet our friend contrived to mingle a good deal of the ornamental with all of the useful in her purchases, and when, some time after, a carriage whirled to the door of a capacious Hazelnut street mansion, and a lady and gentleman descended therefrom, few ladies of Quakerdelphia entered a more elegant and luxurious home than did Mrs. John Smithson when she passed its portals. CHAPTER II. Acquaintances Letty had none in the great city. Mrs. Jones, the lady of her husband’s partner, of course called upon her and gave her a party, to which her acquaintance generally were invited. Now, though Mrs. Jones and her friends belonged most strictly to the class called respectable and genteel, yet they were not fashionable. Letty appeared to comprehend this as it were by intuition. Nature had certainly intended her to be somebody—she accordingly took her line of conduct at once, and she determined that though circumstances required that with Mrs. Jones an air of cordiality and sociability must be preserved, yet this was not so necessary with that lady’s friends. Letty never cut any body directly. Her innate sense of propriety and natural good-breeding revolted from a course to which none but people of vulgar minds and shallow parts ever resort. She possessed, however, a tact which enabled her to drop an acquaintance without the slightest seemingness of rudeness or ill-manners. She knew how first to smile most cordially when she met the “droppee,” to wonder— It was so long since they had met; she supposed, however, it must be her fault, but she had been so busy she had not been able to pay half her visits; to press the hand slightly, and with a smile an angel might almost envy, to say, “Good-bye, I will endeavor soon—” And then glide gently away before the sentence was filled up. And this was the last of it. On the next meeting a sweet smile, a courteous bow, but no time to speak; and so the season passed; no visit exchanged, each eradicated the other’s name from her “list”—the object was effected not only without offense, but with such ease and grace, that the dropped was afterward heard to say: “I think Mrs. A. a most lovely woman, and regret I was compelled by circumstances I could not help to stop visiting her, and so she has given me up.” Mrs. C. is not the only deluded mortal in this world.