Aunt Jean advanced slightly to meet two ladies as they entered the room, and "How d'ye do?" passed from one to another, as they deposited their expensive habiliments and precious humanity into comfortable "_fauteuits_." Then, while Mrs. d'Alberg tried to sustain a conversation with the elder and more substantial of the two, the younger lady, though not exceedingly childish, drew herself towards Honor, and addressed her patronizingly. Here were people who were actual exclamation points in the social grammar. Their imposing appearance forced one to hold one's breath, and yet Dame Rumor, who deals in wholesale whispering at Ottawa, told one, with her hand to her mouth, that not so many years ago, Mr. Atkinson Reid was solving the mysteries of existence, inside a scarlet shirt, antique trousers, high boots and a conical straw hat. Only lately, comparatively speaking, had he discarded the one-storey frame house, in a decidedly un-aristrocratic and objectionable neighborhood, where, nevertheless, fortune was first pleased to smile benignly on his efforts to keep the old leathern purse well filled, and where his now precious, airy, nervous, affected daughters first saw their porridge and potatoes. Things went well in the unpretentious little abode, and by and by Johnny Reid was able to indulge in sundry luxuries of life, that naturally belonged to a more advanced stage of civilization than is assumed in the hut of the ordinary shanty-man or wood-cutter. Years were stealing on, and Ottawa was growing up into a respectable size, and at last one day Johnny Reid made up his mind to abandon his rough work, since his accumulated wealth now allowed him to employ substitutes. With these glittering coins, that represented so many strokes of a heavy axe from a strong arm, and so many drops of sweat from an overheated brow, he would go into the heart of the city and buy finery and style and accomplishments for Maria, and Nellie, and Sarah, and the old woman herself as well, and life would bear fruit at last to him, after all his hard toil and bitter experience. And this is the origin of one of Ottawa's stateliest mansions of to-day, of some of society's most dashing heroines, of John Peter's fine livery and cosy seat behind the best team of gilt-harnessed horses that trot the streets of the Capital, of the best and most sumptuous entertainments that are given in our hospitable City, and of the honest old gentleman himself who from this period must be recognized as John Atkinson Reid Esq., with a decade of distinguished antecedents that every one knows without even hearing their names.