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The next evening old Mr Sillerton Jackson came to dine with the Archers

Mrs Archer was a shy woman and shrank fros Her old friend Mr Sillerton Jackson applied to the investigation of his friends' affairs the patience of a collector and the science of a naturalist; and his sister, Miss Sophy Jackson, who lived with him, and was entertained by all the people who could not secure her ossip that filled out usefully the gaps in his picture

Therefore, whenever anything happened that Mrs Archer wanted to know about, she asked Mr Jackson to dine; and as she honoured few people with her invitations, and as she and her daughter Janey were an excellent audience, Mr Jackson usually ca his sister If he could have dictated all the conditions, he would have chosen the evenings when Newland was out; not because the young ot on capitally at their club) but because the old anecdotist soh his evidence that the ladies of the family never showed

Mr Jackson, if perfection had been attainable on earth, would also have asked that Mrs Archer's food should be a little better But then New York, as far back as the reat fundaotts and Mansons and all their clan, who cared about eating and clothes and money, and the Archer-Newland-van-der-Luyden tribe, ere devoted to travel, horticulture and the best fiction, and looked down on the grosser for, after all If you dined with the Lovell Mingotts you got canvas-back and terrapin and vintage wines; at Adeline Archer's you could talk about Alpine scenery and "The Marble Faun"; and luckily the Archer Madeira had gone round the Cape Therefore when a friendly summons came from Mrs Archer, Mr Jackson, as a true eclectic, would usually say to his sister: "I've been a little gouty since ood to diet at Adeline's"

Mrs Archer, who had long been a , lived with her son and daughter in West Twenty-eighth Street An upper floor was dedicated to Newland, and the tomen squeezed themselves into narrower quarters below In an unclouded harmony of tastes and interests they cultivated ferns in Wardian cases, made macrame lace and wool elazed ware, subscribed to "Good Words," and read Ouida's novels for the sake of the Italian atmosphere (They preferred those about peasant life, because of the descriptions of scenery and the pleasanter sentieneral they liked novels about people in society, whose motives and habits were more comprehensible, spoke severely of Dickens, who "had never drawn a gentlereat world than Bulho, however, was beginning to be thought old-fashioned) Mrs and Miss Archer were both great lovers of scenery It hat they principally sought and ad architecture and painting as subjects for men, and chiefly for learned persons who read Ruskin Mrs Archer had been born a Newland, and hter, ere as like as sisters, were both, as people said, "true Newlands"; tall, pale, and slightly round-shouldered, with long noses, sweet s distinction like that in certain faded Reynolds portraits Their physical resemblance would have been complete if an elderly embonpoint had not stretched Mrs Archer's black brocade, while Miss Archer's brown and purple poplins hung, as the years went on, in frame