So far Mr. P. B. Cunningham had been uninterruptedly successful--the monarch as well as architect of his own fortune. But at that period (the three months before) he had suddenly been made aware that every man has his fate and the end of his career of supremacy. Mrs. P. B. Cunningham had proved herself his fate and put a sudden end to his supremacy. That lady, all the while emerging, had emerged, from the dust and darkness of lower fortune, and become a fashionable butterfly. She had ordered him to buy a four-story brown-stone front, finer than any that he owned, on one of the up-town streets not far from _the_ Avenue; and he had obeyed. She had ordered him to discard his old clothes, and he had obeyed again, though with a sincere reluctance. She had changed his name to Brooks Cunninghame, (observe the _e_!) her own to Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, that of Mary Ann to Miss Marianna Brooks Cunninghame, and that of the male scion of the house, _ætat_ ten as aforesaid, to Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame. The door-plate of the new house could not be arranged in accordance with the new programme, for door-plates had been voted vulgar and abandoned by the _creme de la creme_; but the family cards had been made to bear all the blushing honors in steel engraving and round-hand. This done, the requisite jewelry bought, and some other little arrangements perfected which may develop themselves in due time, the lady had informed Mr. Brooks Cunninghame that both the health and the dignity of the family required summer recreation, and dragged him away on that tour of which we have the privilege of witnessing one of the progresses. Some reference has been made to the array, rather gorgeous than otherwise, of Miss Marianna, for dusty travel. A few words which had passed between the three heads of the family at one of the Boston hotels that morning, may give a little insight into the philosophy of this arrangement. Mr. Brooks Cunninghame, yet retaining a little of the common-sense of his dirt-cart days, had ventured to suggest that "Mary Ann mought wear her commoner duds to ride in, for thim fineries 'ud be spiled before night wid the dust intirely;" and Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, alike indignant at a suggestion so smacking of low life and grieved to find that her husband would persist in retaining a few touches of the brogue of which she had cured herself and her children so triumphantly,--had answered with a sort of verbal two-edged sword that did fatal execution on both the others: