Nobody gave so largely, or lavishly either, to everything, as he did, while to his employees he was always generous and considerate.

Once he thought to join the church, thinking that would add to his respectability; but when talked with by his clergyman he showed himself so lamentably deficient in every necessary qualification that he was advised to wait a while, which he did; but he rented the most expensive pew he could find, and carried the largest prayer-book of any one, and read the loudest, stumbling over the words frightfully, and kept his head down the longest, so long, indeed, that he once went to sleep, and had quite a little nap before his wife nudged him and told him to get up.
'Good Lord deliver us!' Was his ejaculation, as he sprang to his feet, and, adjusting his glasses, looked fiercely round at the amused congregation.
So far as money and display were concerned, the St.Claires and Mrs.
Atherton had not kept up with Peterkin.

On the contrary, as he grew into society they gradually withdrew, until at last Dolly Tracy had it all her own way and looked upon herself as the lady _par excellence_ of the town.

She had been to Europe.

She had seen the queen; she had had some dresses made at Worth's; she had picked up a few French words which she used on all occasions, with but little regard to their appropriateness.
She had decorated a tea set, and was as unlike the Dolly Tracy, who once did her own work and ate griddle cakes from her own kitchen stove, as a person well could be.