An intercourse and a show of friendship had all along been maintained between the families of these Hollanders; and now Mrs. Van Pelt, the young merchant's mother, was to give a large party. Mary Trigillgus had been invited, and her mother had insisted on an acceptance of the invitation. "They are quite friendly to you, Mary, and you can't afford to throw away such friends," the mother said. So it was for Christian Van Pelt's broad, square figure that Mary's eager eyes were seeking; but in vain they sought: it was nowhere to be seen. A choking feeling of disappointment rose in her heart--a disappointment very unequal to the occasion, since she had meant nothing more than to get a sight of the loved figure and then to go on her way. Having satisfied herself that he was not in the store, a yearning desire possessed her to enter the place where he every day walked--a place to her invested with romance, haunted by his presence--a place to which her thoughts often wandered as some stupid child stood by her side in the little school-room spelling out his reading-lesson. She had not for months entered the store--not since that evening when, in her poor parlor, Christian Van Pelt, the rich young merchant, had looked into her eyes with a look that thrilled her for many a day, and spoken some nothings in tones that set her heart throbbing. Indeed, since that day she had avoided passing the store, lest she might seem, even to herself, to be seeking him. And yet her poor eyes and heart were ever seeking him in the countless throngs that passed up and down the busy streets. "I'll get my dress from his store," she said mentally. "I shall wear it with the greater pleasure that he has handled it. My patronage will be to him but as the drop to the ocean," she said with a little bitterness, "but it will be a sweet thought to me that I have contributed even one drop to the flood of his prosperity." So she entered Christian Van Pelt's trade-palace, and said, in answer to the smart clerk's look of inquiry, "I am looking for a silk that will do for the evening and also for the street--something a little out of style, perhaps, might answer." "We have some bargains in such silks--elegant dress-patterns at a third of what they cost us in Paris. Step this way;" and Mary found herself going back and back through the spacious building, with her image advancing to meet her.