The succeeding weeks passed in perfect quiet--and, it must be confessed, profound _ennui_.
"I wish people would begin to call," said Mrs. Fairchild, with an impatient yawn. "I wonder when they will."
"There seems to be visiting enough in the street," said Mr. Fairchild, as he looked out at the window. "There seems no end of Ashfield's company."
"I wish some of them would call here," she replied sorrowfully.
"We are not fine enough for them, I suppose," he answered, half angrily.
"Not fine enough!" she ejaculated with indignant surprise. "_We_ not fine enough! I am sure this is the finest house in the Avenue. And I don't believe there is such furniture in town."
Mr. Fairchild made no reply, but walked the floor impatiently.
"Do you know Mr. Ashfield?" she presently ask.
"Yes," he replied; "I meet him on 'change constantly."
"I wonder, then, why _she_ does not call," she said, indignantly. "It's very rude in her, I am sure. We are the last comers."
And the weeks went on, and Mr. Fairchild without business, and Mrs. Fairchild without gossip, had a very quiet, dull time of it in their fine house.
"I wish somebody would call," had been repeated again and again in every note of _ennui_, beginning in impatience and ending in despair.
Mr. Fairchild grew angry. His pride was hurt. He looked upon himself as especially wronged by his neighbor Ashfield. The people opposite, too--"who were they, that the Ashfields were so intimate with them? The Hamiltons! Why he could buy them over and over again! Hamilton's income was nothing."
At last Mrs. Fairchild took a desperate resolution, "Why should not _we_ call first? We'll never get acquainted in this way," which declaration Mr. Fairchild could not deny. And so she dressed one morning in her finest and drove round with a pack of cards.
Somehow she found every body "out." But that was not much, for, to tell the truth, her heart did beat a little at the idea of entering strange drawing-rooms and introducing herself, and she would be sure to be at home when they returned her calls; and that would be less embarrassing, and suit her views quite as well.
In the course of a few days cards were left in return.
"But, Lawrence, I told you to say I was at home." said Mrs. Fairchild, impatiently, as the servant handed her half a dozen cards.