"I wish you to stay," she said. "You must begin now to see something of society. Otherwise you will have no ease when you come out. And try to talk. Young people must talk." "But I can't talk," faltered Magdalena. "You must learn. Say anything, and in time it will be easy." Magdalena realised that her mother was right. If she was to overcome her natural lack of facile speech, she could not begin too soon. Although she was terrified at the prospect of talking to these people who had alighted and were exchanging platitudes with her mother, she resolved anew that the time should come when she should be as ready of tongue and as graceful of speech as her position and her pride demanded. She sat down by one of the guests and stammered out something about the violets. The young woman she addressed was of delicate and excessive beauty: her brunette face, under a hat covered with corn-coloured plumes, was almost faultless in its outline. She wore an elaborate and dainty French gown the shade of her feathers, and her small hands and feet were dressed to perfection. Magdalena had heard of the beautiful Mrs. Washington, and felt it a privilege to sun herself in such loveliness. The three elderly ladies she had brought with her--Mrs. Cartright, Mrs. Geary, and Mrs. Brannan--were dressed with extreme simplicity. "Yes," replied Mrs. Washington, "they are lovely,--they are, for a fact. Mine have chilblains or something this year, and won't bloom for a cent. Hang the luck! I'm as cross as a bear with a sore head about it." "Would you like me to pick some of ours for you?" asked Magdalena, wondering if she had better model her verbal accomplishments on Mrs. Washington's. She thought them even more picturesque than Helena's. "Do; that's a jolly good fellow." When Magdalena returned with the violets, they were received with a bewitching but absent smile; another carriage-load had arrived, and all were discussing the advent of a "Bonanza" family, whose huge fortune, made out of the Nevada mines, had recently lifted it from obscurity to social fame. "It's just too hateful that I've got to call," said Mrs. Washington, in her refined melodious voice. "Teddy says that I must, because sooner or later we've all got to know them,--old Dillon's a red Indian chief in the financial world; and there's no use kicking against money, anyhow. But I can't cotton to that sort of people, and I just cried last night when Teddy--the old darling! I'd do anything to please him--told me I must call." "It's a great pity we old families can't keep together," said Mrs. Brannan, a stout high-nosed dame. "There are plenty of others for them to know. Why can't they let us alone?" "That's just what they won't do," cried Mrs. Washington. "We're what they're after. What's the reason they've come to Menlo Park? They'll be 'landed aristocracy' in less than no time. Hang the luck!"