Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/243

Rh ones cried out: "Oh, mamma, look at those two little girls, actually walking through the snow; may I ask them in the carriage?" The other says, "No, they are poor children," when the mother cried: "Their parents are poor, and keep a boarding house; you must not ask them into my carriage." These children, though raised in a boarding house, are now married and living in style; one in New Jersey and the other in Fifth Avenue, both wealthy; while the parents of the others are broken up and now actually keep a boarding house, and not a fashionable one at that.

The New York lady blushing, said: "You misunderstood me, I did not mean to make any insinuations against her; I merely mentioned I had been boarding there."

I told her when my friends were mentioned I did not wish to hear them spoken of in a slighting way, as I had a great habit of defending them.

She turned quickly then, and inquired, "Have I not seen you before at Saratoga?" I told her it might be, but unless she saw me at the United States, I reckoned she did not see me. She said she stopped at the Union, but she thought she saw me at the springs. I told her she was mistaken, for although I had been going to Saratoga these ten years, I had only been at the springs three times in my life. She then said she got acquainted in New York with a lady from one of the towns on the Ohio river. It was at the dress-makers and both had to wait a little while in the parlor and thus got acquainted.

She then began to tell me of Miss P 's wealth, and how she was spludging it in New York, when I said, "Well, she may be spludging it around in New