Mrs. Jones swallowed a sponge cake, and washed it down with a mouthful or two of wine; but it almost choked her, and she rose to go without having dazzled Mrs. Hill with an account of her “elegant dinner-service, and the splendid silver tea-set.” She remained imperturbable during the enumeration of the parties Mrs. Jones had attended, and the invitations she had been forced to decline, so bidding her hostess good morning, the lady stepped into her carriage with a feeling of bitter disappointment, “for” said she, “Mrs. Hill don’t look at all as though her husband were doing a bad business. Mr. Jones must be mistaken; no woman on the verge of poverty could ever look as undisturbed as she did this morning.” No woman like Mrs. Jones _could_ have been cheerful under the sad reverses of the young creature whom she chose to despise. _Her_ aim was fashion—her idol wealth. Mrs. Hill cared for neither; she struggled to preserve in adversity the happiness that had begun in prosperity. The object of the visit she received was intelligible to her, and her only emotion was one of pure amusement as she resumed her quiet rational pursuits. Mrs. Jones would have disdained pleasures that occasioned no display. Fanny felt grateful to the Giver of all good for the resources that supplied the place of the worldly amusements in which she could no longer afford to participate; and felt that however they may gratify for a time, they leave, from their uselessness, a void in the heart. That night, while she and her husband sat together in animated, sprightly discourse over some work they had been reading, four people were assembled around the centre-table in one of Mrs. Jones’s handsome parlors. The lady herself, her husband, and Miss Fawney, with her brother, a little snub-nosed, purple-visaged fellow, conceited, of course, and fond of talking. Mrs. Jones held a pencil in her hand. Before her lay a _portfeuille_ of unexceptionable shape and hue, and on a sheet of satin paper she was writing a list of the guests to be invited to a ball Miss Fawney thought it advisable for her to give. It was a popularity party, but as she catered for patronage that needed notes from the élite, not from the vulgar, it was a very exclusive affair. “Every thing shall be perfectly _elegunt_, Marian—so be as select as you please, my love, I fear no rivalry in business like this; Mrs. Macfuss shall see herself at home, if she accepts,” said Mrs. Jones, raising her head proudly, and smiling as she concluded. “That’s right, Sara!” said her husband, stroking his small crop of whiskers. “Go the whole hog, and give us something out of the way.” (Mr. Jones was forgetting Chesterfield, decidedly, but then he had not so much need to learn refinement, since his rise in the world.)