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There were plants and birds and flowers, and little genre pictures of children, animals, and household interiors, arranged with a loving eye and hand. "Did you ever see any thing so perfectly characteristic?" said Mrs. Follingsbee, looking around her as if she were going to faint. "This woman drives Charlie perfectly wild, because she has no appreciation of high art.
There came a day when the house was filled with white flowers, and people came and went, and holy words were spoken; and the fairest flower of all was carried out, to return to the house no more. "That woman is a most unnatural and peculiar woman!" said Mrs. Follingsbee, who had been most active and patronizing in sending flowers, and attending to the scenic arrangements of the funeral.
As a consequence, he had not only opportunities for much quiet feathering of his own nest, but the éclat of always having the use of the Follingsbees' carriages, horses, and opera-boxes, and being the acknowledged and supreme head of fashionable dictation. Ladies sometimes pull caps for such charming individuals, as we have seen in the case of Mrs. Follingsbee and Lillie.
Neither at present did Harry; neither do we. SENTIMENT v. The poet has feelingly sung the condition of "The banquet hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, and garlands dead," &c., and so we need not cast the daylight of minute description on the Follingsbee mansion.
Follingsbee was forward, fussy, and advisory, in his own peculiar free-and-easy fashion; and Mrs. Follingsbee was instructive and patronizing to the very last degree. Lillie had bewailed in her sympathizing bosom John's unaccountable and most singular moral Quixotism in regard to the wine question, and been comforted by her appreciative discourse. Mrs.
Follingsbee: "people never like such things at first, and one must get used to high art before one forms a taste for it. The thing with her is, she has no docility. She does not try to enter into Charlie's tastes."
"What do I care what Dick Follingsbee thinks?" said he to himself: "a man that I despise; a cheat, and a swindler, a man of no principle. Lillie doesn't know the sacrifice it is to me to have such people in my house at all. Hang it all! I wish Lillie was a little more like the women I've been used to, like Grace and Rose and my mother.
Charlie Ferrola, however, was summoned away at early daylight, just as the last of the revellers were dispersing, by a hurried messenger from his wife; and, a few moments after he entered his house, he was standing beside his dying baby, the little fellow whom we have seen brought down on Mrs. Ferrola's arm, to greet the call of Mrs. Follingsbee.
Follingsbee was one of the class of returned travellers who always speak condescendingly of any thing American; as, "so-so," or "tolerable," or "pretty fair," a considerateness which goes a long way towards keeping up the spirits of the country. "I say, Dick," said his lady, "have you seen to the bags and wraps?" "All right, madam." "And my basket of medicines and the books?"
Follingsbee and Lillie was of the most impassioned nature; though, as both of them were women of a good solid perception in regard to their own material interests, there were excellent reasons on both sides for this enthusiasm. Notwithstanding the immense wealth of the Follingsbees, there were circles to which Mrs. Follingsbee found it difficult to be admitted.
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