The change in Patty’s soul was so profound that when the Prince of Wales came down from Canada and everybody fought for tickets to the ball in his honor as if it were Judgment Day itself, she made no plans at all. Could this be the same Patty, who, hitherto, would have bankrupted RoBards for a supreme gown and played the Machiavel for a presentation? When at last even RoBards noted her neglect, and asked her what she expected to wear, she sighed: “I shan’t go at all. It’s a long time since the newspapers referred to me as ‘the woman who was.’ The prince is nineteen years old and he is not interested in grandmothers.” Then for love of her and for pride of her, RoBards must plead and compel. He must drive her to the dressmakers and whisper them that nothing should be spared to drape her so that an emperor would stare and a bashaw salaam. Men are odd cattle. He had stormed at her for years for extravagance and now he was outraged by an economy! Perhaps he was thinking a little of his own position as an important citizen, an American prince; but his chief zeal was in the defense of his beloved from that final fatal discouragement which ends a woman’s joy in this world. It was he, not Patty, that made sure of the invitation and toadied to Isaac Brown, the burly old sexton of Grace Church who decided who was to sit in what pew of his sacred edifice, and who was to be invited to any affair meriting the high epithet “genteel.” Even Ikey Brown recognized the solidity of Judge RoBards and his lady, (who had been a Jessamine) and they received their tickets to the Academy of Music and, besides, the almost royal honor of dancing in the _quadrille d’honneur_. The overcrowded floor gave way with a crash and had to be rebuilt, but Patty escaped so much as the rumpling of her cherry satin train. When she was presented to the young prince, her husband fancied that he saw in those boyish eyes, so avid of beauty, a flash of homage for the graces that had not yet gone. The cinder was still fierce from the furnace. But Patty when she was at home again wept all night. The only excuse she would give was a whimpering regret that the far-away Immy could not have been there and danced with the prince. But RoBards knew that she mourned rather the yet more remote Patty of the long ago, who was no longer present within her tight stays and her voluminous paneled brocade. She wept over the grave of herself. The next night he understood the ravages of the years yet more keenly, for he must march as a veteran in the firemen’s parade under the dripping, smoking, bobbing torches. Five thousand marched that night, and it was his last appearance with the volunteers, whose own last days were numbered. Philadelphia and Cincinnati already had steam fire engines drawn by horses, and in a few years hired firemen would replace the old foot-runners and hand-pumpers.