Her Husband's Purse

VIII

Three weeks later, when Margaret came to review the course of events which had strangely led to the almost unbelievable fact of her betrothal to Daniel Leitzel, she realized that the "turn for the worse," as she called it, had come to her upon watching Mr. Leitzel with Harriet's children on that evening after the automobile ride which had made her spiritually ill. Squatting on the floor with the three babies gathered about him, he had actually become human and tender and self-forgetful; and he had exhibited a cleverness in entertaining and fascinating the bright, eager children that had evoked her admiration and almost her liking.

She had not come downstairs until just a half-hour before dinner, and as she had entered the library, dressed in a low-necked, short-sleeved summer gown of pale pink batiste, she had noted, without much interest, Mr. Leitzel's countenance of vivid pleasure as, from his place on the floor, unable to rise because of the children sprawling all over him, he had gazed up at her. But when, after watching him play for a half-hour with the babies, she had presently relieved him of the youngest to give it its bottle, she really began to feel, before the ardent look he fixed upon her as she sat holding the hungry, drowsy infant to her heart, a faint stirring of her blood.

"The Madonna and the Child!" he had said adoringly, and Margaret was astonished to find herself blushing; to discover that this man could bring the faintest warmth to her cheeks!

In the course of that evening, during dinner and later when the children had been taken to bed by Harriet, and Mr. Leitzel was again, as on the previous night, left on her hands, she could not be indifferent to the novel experience of finding herself the object of a fixity and intensity of admiration which, from a man so self-centred, suggested the possession on her part of an unsuspected power.

Even his occasional conversational faux pas did not break the peculiar spell he cast upon her by his devotion.

"Have you read many of these books?" he asked her, glancing at the shelves near him. "Here are about twenty books all by one man—James. Astonishing! What does he find to write about to such an extent?"

"They are the works of the two Jameses, the brothers Henry and William, the novelist and the psychologist, you know; only, Uncle Osmond insisted upon cataloguing Henry, also, with the psychologists."

"The James brothers? I've heard more about Jesse than about the other two. Jesse was an outlaw, you remember. The other two, then, were respectable?"

"'Respectable?' Henry and William James? I'm sure they would hate to be considered so!"

Daniel nodded knowingly. "Bad blood all through, no doubt."

"Yes," said Margaret gravely, "of the three I prefer Jesse. He at least was not a psychologist, nor did he write in English past finding out! By the way, I remember Uncle Osmond used to say," she added, a reminiscent dreaminess in her eyes which held Daniel's breathless gaze, "that only in a very primitive or provincial society was a regard for respectability paramount, and that in an individual of an upper class it bespoke either assinine stupidity or damned hypocrisy."

Daniel started and stared until his eyes popped, to hear that soft, drawling voice say "damned," even though quoting. Why, one would think a nice girl would be embarrassed to own a relative who used profane language, instead of flaunting it!

"Wasn't your uncle a Christian?" he asked dubiously.

"Oh, no!" she laughed.

Now what was there to laugh at in so serious a question? Daniel was finding Miss Berkeley's conversation extremely upsetting.

"He died unsaved?" he asked gravely.

"I suppose a mediæval theologian would have said he did."

"I trust he didn't influence you, Miss Berkeley!"

"But of course, I got lots of ideas from him, for which I'm very thankful. If it had not been for his interesting mind, I could never have lived so long with his devilish disposition, or, as he used to call it, his 'hell of a temper.'" ("If he's going to fall in love with me," Margaret was saying to herself, as she saw his shocked countenance, "he's got to know the worst—I won't deceive him.")

"I'm addicted to only two vices, Mr. Leitzel: profanity and beer."

Daniel smiled faintly, she looked so childishly innocent. "You are different from any girl I ever met. As a conversationalist especially. New Munich girls never talk the way you do."

"You mean they are not profane?"

"You're only joking, aren't you?" asked Daniel anxiously. "I didn't refer merely to your using oaths, but the ideas you occasionally express; that, for instance, about 'respectability,' I'm sure I never heard our New Munich young ladies say things like that. However," he added, his face softening and beaming, "nothing you could do or say could ever counteract for me the impression you made upon me as you sat there to-night holding that baby!"

"You are very fond of children, aren't you, Mr. Leitzel?" she asked graciously.

"Well, I should say! I'd like to have a large family, even if it is expensive!"

"So should I," said Margaret frankly; and Daniel had a moment's doubt as to the maidenly modesty of this reply, much as he approved of the sentiment.

After that evening, during the next three weeks, the course of Daniel's love ran swiftly, if not always smoothly; for his usually unreceptive soul was so deeply penetrated by the personality of this maiden whom he desired that he actually felt, intuitively, her aversion to certain phases of his mind the worthiness of which he had never before had a doubt, and he therefore curbed, somewhat, the expression of his real self, adapting his discourse, though vaguely, to the evident tastes of the woman whose favour he sought. Also, his genuine interest in her made him less obnoxiously egotistical. Indeed, all his most offensive traits were, at this time, and unfortunately for poor Margaret's fate, kept so much in abeyance, and so strongly did she, quite unconsciously, bring out the little best that was in him, that her earlier impression of him was speedily coloured over by the more gracious effect he produced as a self-effacing and worshipful lover—a lover to one who, for many years, had not been treated with even common consideration.

Had Daniel had the least idea how little Margaret was touched by the material value of the gifts he daily laid at her feet, he would certainly have saved himself some of the heavy expenditure he considered necessary for the accomplishment of his courting. If he had known that it was only the attention, the thoughtfulness, the devotion showered upon her constantly that meant so much to her whose life had hitherto been one long siege of self-sacrifice, he would surely have limited the quality, if not the quantity, of his offerings.

As Margaret came to realize that she was drifting surely, fatally, into the arms of Daniel Leitzel, her conscience forced her to try to justify her selling herself for a home.

"To marry without love? But I might have married 'Reverend Hoops' for love! And he was so much worse—less possible," she amended her reflections, "than Daniel is. It was really love that I felt for that poor, bow-legged Hoops! Yes, the sort of love that would make marriage a madness of ecstasy! Too great, indeed, for a human soul to bear! And even if one did not presently discover one's mate to be a delusion with an Adam's apple, who said 'Yes, sir,' to a negro, even if he continued to seem to you a worthy object of love, such an intoxication of happiness as I felt over my imaginary Hoops could not possibly continue, one's strength couldn't sustain it—one would end with nervous prostration!

"Hattie and Walter, when they married, were romantically in love, and now, what could be more prosaic than their jog-trot relation? So much for love." She missed that phase of the question.

But there was another aspect of a loveless marriage that had to be reckoned with.

"How would I be better than a woman of the streets? Yes I would be better, for I would bear children. But children born outside of love? Well, Reverend Hoops might have been the father of my children even after I, recovered from 'loving' him, and every one of my children might have had an Adam's apple. Better, it seems to me, to marry with eyes open and not blinded by love.' Then, at least, one would not have to suffer a dreadful flop afterward. The higher one's ideal in marriage, the more certainly does one seem doomed to bitter disillusionment. Probably the jog-trot, commonplace relation between a man and woman, recognized and accepted as such, is the only one likely to endure. Insist upon romance, and the end, I verily believe, is divorce. Daniel couldn't make me unhappy any more than he could make me happy—there's that comfort at least.

"As for a great passion of the soul, the man capable of it is certainly a rara avis and isn't likely to come my way. If I thought," said Margaret to herself, her heart beating thickly at the vision she called up from the depths in her, "that life held anywhere for me such a great spiritual passion, given and returned——" Her face turned white, she closed her eyes for an instant upon the too dazzling light of the vision. "But then," she resumed her self-justification, "if the highest ideal of marriage is unrealizable, should one compromise with a lower ideal, or avoid marriage altogether? I remember Uncle Osmond once said it was a psychological fact that a woman was happier even in a loveless marriage than in a single life. And, dear me, the race can't stop because poets have dreamed of a paradise which earth does not know!"

It seemed to be another trick of the irony of fate that while everything in Margaret's environment and in her education conduced to make her walk blindly into such a marriage as this with Daniel Leitzel, nothing in her whole life had in the least fitted her for meeting and coping with that which was before her as the wife of such a man as Daniel really was.

She was glad that the form which her lover's proposal of marriage assumed obviated any necessity on her part for salving over her own lack of sentiment.

"Of course, you have surmised ere this, Miss Berkeley—Margaret—that I intended to make you an offer of marriage, to ask you to become—my beloved wife!" he said impressively, and Margaret checked her inclination to beg him not to make it sound too much like a tombstone inscription. "My proposal may seem to you precipitate; I am aware it is unusual to propose on so short a courtship; you perhaps think I ought to keep on paying attentions to you for at least several months longer. But I can spare so little time away from my business. And to court you by correspondence—well, I am certainly too much of a gentleman to send typewritten letters, dictated to my stenographer, to a lady, especially one so refined as you are and one whom I want to make my wife. And to write out letters myself, that's something I have neither time nor inclination for. And something I'm not used to either. So, I thought that while I'm down here on the spot, I might as well stay and conclude the matter. That is why I have been so pressing in my attentions to you—not to lose time, you see, which is money to me and should be to every man. So with as much haste as was consistent with propriety and tact, Miss Berkeley, I've been leading up to this present hour in which I offer you my hand and heart and," he added, his tone becoming sentimental, "my life's devotion."

It sounded for the most part like a lawyer's brief, Margaret thought, as, sitting white and quiet, she listened to him.

"You have given me every reason to think, Miss Berkeley, by your reception of my assiduous attentions, that my suit was agreeable to you and that you would accept me when I asked you to, in spite of the evident opposition of your sister and her husband."

"But they are not opposed to you. Why, what could have made you think so? They have been very kind to you, Mr. Leitzel."

"To me personally, yes; kind and hospitable. But as your suitor? No. Have they not persistently put themselves in the way of my seeing you alone, and thus tried to interfere with my taking from them you and your—taking you from them?" he hastily concluded.

Daniel had been, all through this courtship, strangely, and to himself incomprehensibly, shy about making any inquiries as to Margaret's dowry, though he fairly suffered in the repression of his desire to know what she was "worth." He wondered what it really was that made him tongue-tied whenever he thought of "sounding" her? Perhaps it was that she, on her side, was so persistently reticent not only as to her own property but with regard to his possessions. Never had she even hinted any curiosity as to his income, though he had several times led up to the subject in order to give her the necessary opportunity. The matter would, of course, have to be talked out between them some time. Daniel was all prepared with his own story; he knew just exactly what statements he was going to "hand out" to his future wife and what he was not going to tell. But the strange thing was she didn't seem to feel the least interest in the matter.

When Margaret tried just now to assure him that her relatives' supposed interference with his attentions to her was wholly imaginary, she received her first glimpse of the notorious obstinacy of the little lawyer, and she recognized, with some consternation, that when once an idea had found lodgment in his brain, it was there to stay; no reasoning or proof could dislodge it.

"Since your relatives are opposed to your marrying," he reiterated his conviction at the end of her proofs to the contrary, "I think it would be well if we got married before I returned to New Munich. This would not only save me the expense of another trip South, but would avert any further plotting on the part of your family. I'm afraid to leave the spot," he affirmed, "without taking you with me. Anyway, I can't." His face flushed and he fairly caught his breath as he gazed at her. "I'm thinking of you day and night, every hour, every minute! If I went back without you I couldn't work. I'm just crazy about you!"

It was this outburst of feeling that just saved the day for Daniel, his cold-blooded dissection of his penurious motives in his swift lovemaking having almost turned the tide against him.

"If we marry at all," said Margaret in a matter-of-fact tone, "I agree with you that it might as well be at once."

"'If at all?' Ah!" said Daniel almost coquettishly, "that's to remind me that you haven't accepted me yet? I'm going ahead too fast, am I? My feelings ran away with me, Margaret, for the moment because it's simply unthinkable to me that you should refuse me—I mean, I could not think of life without you now that I know and love you."

"Very well, I'll marry you, Mr. Leitzel. I might as well. But if it is to be done, we shall have to have a quiet wedding, you know."

Calmly as she spoke, the colour dyed her cheeks as she realized the fatal finality of the words she uttered. Deep down in her soul, not clearly recognized by herself, was a vague sense of guilt in the thing she was doing, all her logic to the contrary notwithstanding. For every normal woman feels instinctively that the human relation which may make her a mother, if it is not a sacred and ennobling relation, must be a degrading one, and no experiences of life, however embittering, can ever wholly obliterate this profound intuition. Cynical as were Margaret's theories of love and marriage, she could never have given herself to Daniel Leitzel had she not felt goaded to it by her unfitness to earn her living, and by her sister's desire to have her away. And even these two driving circumstances could not wholly exonerate her to herself from the charge before her conscience of unworthy weakness in taking an easy way out instead of grappling with her difficulty and conquering it, as great souls, she very well knew, have ever done.

IX

It was the day after Daniel's "proposal" that, as Margaret stood before her bureau in her bedroom dressing to receive her lover, Harriet, who had been quite unable to disguise her satisfaction over the betrothal, knocked at her door and came into her room.

"Can't I help you dress, dear?" she asked kindly.

"Will you hook this thing up the back, please, Hattie?"

"Oh, but you are rash to wear this new chiffon waist, Margaret; chiffon mashes so easily, you know."

"But I'm not going out; I shall not be putting a wrap over it," said Margaret, looking at Harriet in surprise.

"I know you're not going out, but, Margaret, chiffon mashes so easily!"

"Well, I'll try to remember not to hold any of the children, though I'd rather mash the waist than forego that pleasure. Still, clothes are scarce and I've got no money for a trousseau——"

"Donkey! This will be your first tête-à-tête with Mr. Leitzel since your engagement, and he's quite crazy about you—and chiffon is most perishable."

Margaret looked at her blankly.

"Do you see no connection between the two facts, you goose?" demanded Harriet.

"Oh!" exclaimed Margaret. "Now I see what you mean!"

"Really?"

"But, Hattie, dear, you needn't be so—so explicit."

"'Explicit!' I nearly had to draw a diagram! Look here, Margaret, you're too thin; there's no excuse for anybody's looking as thin as you do when cotton wadding is so cheap."

"Recommend it to Mr. Leitzel; he's thinner than I am."

"I came in to tell you that Walter has ordered the wedding announcements and they will be finished in ten days; you and I and Mr. Leitzel can meantime be addressing the envelopes. I've drawn up a list of names; you can look over it and see whether I've forgotten any one. You must get Mr. Leitzel's list to-day."

"Very well."

Margaret turned away to her closet to hide the quick tears that sprang to her eyes at her sister's quite cold-blooded eagerness to speed her on her way. Harriet seemed to be almost feverishly fearful that something might intervene to stop the marriage if it were not quickly precipitated.

It was when her betrothed gave her, that evening, a diamond ring, that Margaret's strongest revulsion came to her, so strong that when she had conquered it, by reminding herself again of all the arguments by which she had brought herself to this pass, she had overcome for good and all any last remaining hesitation to accept her doom.

"You may think I was very extravagant, Margaret," Daniel said, as he held her hand and slipped the beautiful jewel upon her finger. "It cost me three hundred dollars. But you see, dear, a diamond is always property; capital safely invested. I'm only too glad and thankful that I can afford to give my affianced bride a costly diamond engagement ring. Is it tight enough?" he anxiously inquired. "I'm afraid it is a little loose; you better have it made tighter; no extra charge for that, they told me at the jeweller's. You might lose it if it's loose."

Margaret had a momentary impulse to tear the ring from her finger and fling it in his face, and such impulses were so foreign to her gentle disposition that she marvelled at herself.

"I'm glad it's property, Daniel," she returned with a perfunctory facetiousness, "for if you don't use me well, I can sell out to Isaac or Israel and run off! Or, if business got dull with you, we could fall back on our diamond ring!"

"My business get dull!" he laughed. It was rather delightful to know she was marrying him with so little idea of his great possessions; another proof of the fascination he had always had for ladies, according to Jennie and Sadie.

He was beginning to feel a little nervous at the thought of his sisters. Jennie, especially, would not like it that he was going ahead and getting married without consulting her. Of course, she and Sadie would both see, as soon as they came to know Margaret, that he had, even without their help, "struck a bonanza" in getting such a wife; so sweet-tempered and unselfish, so lovely looking, so healthy, such "a perfect lady," so "refined," except when she said "damn" and "devilish." He must warn her not to forget herself before his sisters—they'd never get over the shock. He had no doubt that eventually Jennie and Sadie would be as delighted with his "choice" as he was himself. He had told them so in his letter to them that day, assuring them that they would find his bride possessed of every quality they had always insisted upon in the girl he made his wife.

It did seem strange not to be able to tell them what Margaret's fortune was. He knew how eager they must be to know. He was beginning to feel very restive himself at not being enlightened on that score.

"Funny how I can't bring myself to ask her about it!" he wondered at himself for the hundredth time. "But she seems so disinterested in her love for me, how can I seem less so in mine for her? It would not look well!"

"Harriet wants you to draw up your list," Margaret here reminded him, "for the wedding announcements; she'd like to have it to-day."

"Harriet wants—— Is she running this wedding?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yes, quite so. You and she and I have got to address envelopes all day to-morrow, you know."

"Very well. I have already made out my list. It took a good deal of careful and thoughtful discrimination," he said, drawing a document from his pocket and unfolding it, "though not nearly so much as it would if I were being married in New Munich and having a large wedding. Mere announcements—one doesn't have to draw the line so carefully, you know, as in the case of invitations to one's house."

"'Draw the line?'" repeated Margaret questioningly; for social caste in South Carolina, being less fluid than in Pennsylvania, her family for generations had scarcely even rubbed against people of any other status than its own; and the gradations and shades of social difference with which Daniel had wrestled in making his list was something quite outside her experiences.

"Well, you see, every one we send announcements to," Daniel elucidated his meaning, "is bound to call on you; only too glad of the chance. And, naturally, you don't want undesirable people calling on you. If you didn't return their calls, you would make enemies of them; and while I am so fortunately situated that that would not make any material difference to us, still it is better to avoid making enemies if possible."

"But—I don't understand. How do you happen to have acquaintances that are 'undesirable,' and in what sense undesirable—so much so as to make it awkward to have to return their calls?"

"Well, for instance, the clerks employed in my office. I think they may perhaps club together and give us a handsome wedding-present if we send them cards. And if they do, I suppose their wives will feel privileged to call."

"And their wives are 'undesirable?' Yes, I suppose I see what you mean. How awfully narrow our lives are, aren't they? I imagine it might be a very broadening and interesting experience to really make friends with other classes than our own. I've never had the shadow of a chance to."

Daniel's glow of pride in realizing that he was marrying a woman whose aristocratic ignorance of other classes than her own was so absolute as to make her suppose naïvely that it might be "broadening and interesting" to know such, quite counteracted the disturbing effect of this absurd suggestion. He had only to remember his sisters' long struggle for recognition and their present precarious foothold in New Munich "society" to appreciate to the full the (to him) wonderful fact that his wife and all her "kin," as they called their relatives, "could have it to say" they had always been "at the top."

That such a wife might find his sisters "undesirable" did not occur to him, his sense of his sisters' crudities being dulled by familiarity with them, and his standard of value being so largely a financial one.

"When folks call on you in New Munich, Margaret," said Daniel, "Jennie and Sadie will be a great help to you in telling you whom of your callers you must cultivate and whom you must not."

"But aside from your employees and their wives there would be only your family's friends, of course?" Margaret asked, again puzzled.

"Well, some people prominent in our church, but not in society, and a few others, may bother us some. You need not worry about it; Jennie and Sadie will separate the sheep from the goats for you," he smiled.

"You have told me so little of your people. Your sisters live in New Munich?"

"I ought to have mentioned before this, dear, that my sisters keep house for me. They will continue to live with me."

"Oh!" Margaret's heart bounded with a great relief at this information, though even to her own secret consciousness it seemed disloyal to rejoice that she was not going to be thrown alone upon the society of Daniel Leitzel; the prospect had already begun to seem rather appalling.

"No use in our setting up a separate establishment," continued Daniel; "it's so much cheaper for us all to live together, my sisters being such excellent managers."

Margaret, not gathering from this that his sisters shared with him the expense of the "establishment," but concluding, rather, that they were dependent upon him, hastened to assure him that she would not wish him, on her account, to assume the support of two households.

"To tell you the truth, Margaret, I shouldn't know how to get on without Jennie and Sadie, they understand me and all my little habits so well, and they do take such care of my comforts, which is a great thing to a man who constantly uses his brain so strenuously as I do."

Again Margaret inwardly congratulated herself that it would not devolve upon her to take care of his comforts and learn all his "little habits," which occupation appeared to her a pitiable waste of a woman's life—in the case of any but a great man.

"When I did it for Uncle Osmond," she reflected, "it seemed worth while because of what he was giving to the world almost up to the day of his death."

"The work of a corporation lawyer," she asked Daniel, "is it anything more than a money-making job?"

"Anything more?" repeated Daniel, shocked at the suggestion that it could be anything more. "Isn't that enough?"

"Dear me, no! When two women spend their lives keeping a man fit for his work, they surely want to know that his work is worth such a price; that it is benefiting society."

"Well, of course, any money-making 'job,' as you call it (I would hardly call my legal work a 'job') must benefit society; if I make money, I not only can support a family but can give to public charities, and to the church."

"There's nothing in that, Daniel; I have studied enough social and political economy to know, as you, too, certainly must know, that society has outgrown the philanthropy and charity idea; has learned to hate philanthropy and charity; people are demanding the right to earn their own way and keep their self-respect."

"I'm afraid, Margaret," said Daniel gravely, "your irreligious uncle gave you some rather unladylike ideas. However," he smiled, "my Christian influence on you, as fond of me as you are, will soon make you forget his infidel teachings. For goodness' sake, dear, don't forget yourself and repeat such atheistic thoughts before my sisters or indeed to any one in New Munich. Our best society is very critical."

It flashed upon Margaret to wonder, with a sudden sense of despair, what her uncle would have said to her marrying Daniel Leitzel.

"If I don't do it quickly, I can't hold out!" she miserably thought.

But she realized that she confronted a worse fate in the alternative of remaining with Hattie.

"How old are your sisters?" she asked.

"They are both elderly women, though as vigorous as they ever were."

Margaret told herself that she would be so much kinder to them than Hattie had ever been to her. "They shall never feel unwelcome in my home," she resolved.

"Are they your only relatives in New Munich?" she inquired.

"In New Munich, yes. But Hiram lives in Millerstown nearby."

"Your parents are not living?"

"My mother—no, my parents are not living."

"You seem not quite sure," she smiled.

Daniel coloured uncomfortably. The thought of his Mennonite step-mother gave him his first humiliating sense of inferiority to a Berkeley of Berkeley Hill. What a shock it would be to "a perfect lady" like Margaret if she ever met the old woman! He would try to avert such a stab to his self-respect.

"I suppose," he thought with some bitterness, "I can't get out of telling her about mother; she's bound to hear of her some time, and even perhaps meet her."

"I have a step-mother," he said testily.

"She lives in New Munich?"

"No, fifteen miles out in the country. We don't see much of her."

"I don't see her name here," said Margaret, glancing down the list he had given her.

"No; it won't be necessary to send her a card."

"You are not friendly with her? She was not a good step-mother to you?"

"Oh, yes; no one could be unfriendly with her—that is, she's an inoffensive, good-hearted old woman. But—well, we see very little of her; she's not a blood-relative, you know."

"But surely, if you are not at daggers' points with her, you would send your father's widow an announcement of your wedding!"

"But—we don't think very much of her, Margaret; we're not, just to say, intimate with her."

"You say, though, that she is 'inoffensive and good-hearted,' and she was your father's wife?" repeated Margaret, looking mystified.

"Oh, well," Daniel gave in, "I'll add her name if you think I—I ought to. She'll be so pleased; she'll tell it all over the township! I mean"—he pulled himself up—"well, you see, she's old and no use to any one and I'm afraid she's going to be, after a while, something of a burden to us all."

Margaret remained silent, as Daniel took a pencil from his vest-pocket and scribbled at the end of his wedding list.

"There," he said, handing the paper back to her. "Anything to please you, my dear!"

"Daniel?"

"Well, dearest?"

"I don't like the way you speak of that old lady."

"But haven't I consented to send cards to her, Margaret?"

"Yes. And I'm sure that a man who loves children as you do, who gives money to charities and the church, as you tell me you do, couldn't be thoughtless of the aged. I don't want to believe you could."

"No, indeed! I gave one hundred dollars last year to our U. B. Church Home for Old Ladies." He drew out his purse, extracted a newspaper clipping, and passed it to her, "My name heads the list, you see."

"Oh, Daniel, and you were going to neglect to send an announcement of your wedding to the 'aged, inoffensive, kind-hearted, but useless and burdensome' widow of your father!"

"But, Margaret," he protested, his self-esteem wincing at her disapproval, "if ever you see her, you'll not blame me! You'll understand. Anyway, family sentiment among you Southerners is so much stronger, I've always been told, than with us in the North."

"I'm sure it must be."

"My step-mother is too poor, too, to send us a wedding present," he added as a mitigating reason for his "neglect."

Margaret, having no conception of his penuriousness (he seemed so lavishly generous to her), took such speeches as this for a childish simplicity, the eccentricity of legal genius, perhaps. Had she known that he actually felt it wasteful to invest an expensively engraved card and a stamp where there would be no return of any kind, she would have advised him to consult an alienist.

Little did she and Daniel dream that the sending of that wedding announcement to old Mrs. Leitzel of Martz Township was going to make history for the entire Leitzel family.

X

The marriage of Daniel Leitzel took place in the fall, and during all the following winter New Munich kept up its lively interest in the bride, and discussed freely and constantly her personality, looks, manner, clothes, opinions, and, most impressive of all, her unique style of speech on occasions; it also speculated boldly and with the keenest curiosity as to how she "got on" with Danny and her "in-laws."

As the Weekly Intelligencer had predicted, many "social events" celebrated the marriage. To entertain the bride and groom came to be such a social distinction that people vied with each other in the extravagant elaborateness of their parties; and not to have met Mrs. Leitzel proved one to be socially obscure.

To the men of New Munich it was a "seven days' wonder" that a woman of such charm and distinction should have "tied up" with a man like Dan.

"How did a weasel like Dan Leitzel ever put it over a girl like that? Why, he's at least twice her age!"

But the women, noting that the bride's clothes with the exception of her two evening gowns, however graceful and becoming, were home-made, and that though the lace on some of them was real and rare, it was very old, did not wonder so much at the marriage.

"She is certainly making a hit with New Munich," was the verdict at first. "Isn't she the very dearest thing that ever happened?"

Margaret's amiable, sympathetic manner, her simplicity, her occasional drollery, the distinction of her fine breeding, fascinated these people of a different tradition and fibre.

"No wonder Danny Leitzel looks like another man!" his acquaintances commented. "Why, he's taking on flesh! He looks ten years younger! Do you notice how spryly he walks? And how radiantly he beams on everybody, the old skinflint! Yes, he certainly had his usual luck when he got that young wife of his!"

It was another cause for wonder and widespread comment that the maiden sisters, too, looked brighter and younger since the advent of their brother's bride.

"They're awfully proud of her and of the fuss being made over her and Danny! Who would have dreamed that Miss Jennie and Miss Sadie could get on peaceably with their brother's wife, living in the same house with her! It seems unbelievable."

"Oh, wait! She's a new thing just now, but wait! We shall presently see and hear—what we shall see and hear! If they get on peaceably, I'll warrant it's not because Miss Jennie and Miss Sadie are angels. It's Mrs. Danny that's so awfully easy-going they can't quarrel with her. But of course it can't possibly last. If she is easy-going, she isn't a jelly-fish. They're bound to clash after a while. You'll see what you'll see!"

"Even the bride herself looks happy," one maiden pensively remarked. "I shouldn't think she would. I couldn't have married Dan Leitzel."

"You don't know what you might have done if tempted," a friend of the maiden pointedly suggested.

"But she seems to be devoted to Danny. She really acts so."

"Oh, that's just her Southern warmth of manner. Don't take that seriously. As if a stunning girl like that could be in love with him!"

"But I heard she was poor and dependent and that Danny's devotion and goodness to her made her just adore him! An old man's darling, you know!"

There were only one or two people who, more observant than communicative, noted that Mrs. Leitzel, though lazily good-humoured and apparently happy, had a strained expression in her large, soft eyes, a veiled, elusive look of trouble, almost of suffering.

Meantime, the people of New Munich were not more astonished than were Daniel's sisters themselves at the relation which they found themselves sustaining toward his wife. It had taken only a few days of association with Margaret to disarm them of their stiffness, suspicion, and jealousy of their brother's devotion to her. They found her so surprisingly willing to take second place in her husband's house, so disinclined to usurp any of the prerogatives which they had so long enjoyed (and which they knew most people would think should now be hers) that in spite of many things about her which they could not understand or approve, they presently succumbed to the subtle spell of her magnetism and her docility and became almost as enthusiastic about her as was Danny himself.

Long and earnest were the discussions they held in secret over her.

"Her clothes are so plain," lamented Sadie. "You could hardly call 'em such a trussoo, could you? All she's got is just her travelling suit with two silk waists, two house dresses, one afternoon dress, and two evening dresses. And her underclothes ain't fancy like a bride's. When I asked her to show me her wedding underclothes, she said she didn't get any new, she hadn't needed any! To be sure, what she has got is awful fine linen and hand embroidered, but it ain't made a bit fancy and no coloured ribbons at. All plain white," said Sadie in a tone of keen disappointment.

"And her evening dresses," said Jennie; "she says the lace on 'em she 'inherited.' Putting old second-hand lace on your wedding outfit yet! I told her I'd anyhow think she'd buy new for her wedding outfit. And she said, 'But I couldn't afford to buy lace like this. My great-grandmother wore this lace on a ball gown.'"

"She ain't ashamed to say right out she can't afford this and that," said Sadie wonderingly.

"Well, to be sure, that's just to us, and we're her folks now. She'd know better than to say it outside."

"Well, I guess anyhow then!" Sadie fervently hoped.

"But it looks as if she didn't have much, don't it?"

"I'm afraid it does." Sadie shook her head.

"What I want to know is, did she or didn't she bring Danny anything?" Jennie worried.

"It's hard to say," sighed Sadie.

"I don't like to ask her right out, just yet anyhow. After a while I will mebby," said Jennie.

"She's wonderful genteel, the most genteel lady I ever saw," remarked Sadie. "And how she speaks her words so pretty! Buttah for butter; and haose for house. It sounds grand, don't it?"

"It's awful high-toned," Jennie granted. "I wonder what Hiram's Lizzie will have to say when she sees her once. Won't Lizzie look common anyhow, alongside of her?"

"Well, I guess!"

"Hiram will have more jealous feelings than ever when he sees what a genteel lady Danny picked out; ain't?"

"Yes, anyhow!"

"And that makes something, too, being high-toned that way; it makes near as much as money," said Jennie thoughtfully.

"Still, I don't believe Danny would have married her if she hadn't anything," Sadie speculated.

"Well, I guess not, too, mebby. I hope not. It's next Sabbath we're invited to Millerstown to spend the day at Hiram's, you mind?" she told Sadie; "if only you don't take the cold or have the headache," she added, insisting always upon regarding Sadie as an invalid to be coddled.

"You know, Jennie, Danny always says he has so ashamed for our Hiram's common table manners. I guess he won't like it, either, before Margaret that Hiram eats so common, for all he's a minister."

"Yes, well, but supposing she met Mom by chance, what would she think? Danny better consider of that before he worries over our Hiram."

"Yes, I guess, too," Sadie agreed.

Meantime, Margaret, during these first months after her marriage, was living through a succession of spiritual upheavals and epochs which, under a calm and even phlegmatic exterior, were completely hidden from those about her.

Her earliest impressions in her new and strange environment at the Leitzels' home in New Munich were confused and bewildering; for so isolated and narrow had her life hitherto been, that vulgarity in any form had never, up to this time, touched or come nigh her, and she did not understand it, did not know how to meet or cope with it.

But the second stage of her experience, as the situation became less confused, more definite, was, in spite of Daniel's devotion to her, for which she was grateful, a transitory sense of humiliation, of mortification, that she had married into a family that was "straight-out common"—she, a Berkeley. It was probably the first time in her life that she had ever given a thought to the fact that she was a Berkeley. But since to a Southerner of good family, to be well-born was a detail of inestimable importance, she had naturally assumed that any man whom Walter brought into his home and presented to her and Hattie must be worthy of that honour. It was on this assumption that so many of Daniel's peculiarities had failed to mean to her what she could now see they meant—sheer commonness. Why had Walter taken it for granted so easily that because a man was a successful and prominent lawyer he was a gentleman? Yes, her own sister's husband had let her go so far as to marry into a family of whom he knew either too little or too much!

"I trusted Walter so entirely, I didn't even think of questioning him on such a matter!" she reflected with some bitterness upon his willingness to sacrifice her in order to preserve the peace of his own home.

"There are two kinds of lower class people, common people and people who are only just plain," she philosophized. "If Daniel's family were just plain, I could take them to my heart and be glad for the broadening experience of knowing and loving them. I could get over my prejudices about blood—I recognize that they are prejudices—and I wouldn't even mind his sisters' peculiarities. But they are not just plain. They are—— Oh, my good Lord!" she almost moaned, covering her face with her hands.

However, all the experiences of Margaret's life had taught her, through very severe discipline, to accept philosophically whatever circumstances fell to her lot and to extract from alien conditions whatever of comfort could possibly be found in them. So, the third stage of the strenuous crisis through which she was passing was more cheerful. She found herself so interested in the novelty of the life and characters about her that it began to seem like the open page of an absorbing story. Indeed, so interested did she become, that for a time she forgot to think of it all in its relation to her own life. That phase was destined to be forced upon her later with added poignancy. But for the time being, even the fearfully vulgar taste of Daniel's house and its furnishings, the like of which she had never beheld, and Sadie's youthful toilettes—her empire gowns, middie blouses with Windsor ties, and hats with little velvet streamers down the back—served only to greatly entertain her.

"Sadie was always such a fancy dresser that way," Jennie would explain with pride. "Yes, she's a girl that's wonderful for dress."

Jennie's invariable reference to her younger sister as "a girl" seemed intended to carry out the idea of Sadie's sixteen-year-old style of dress.

"I suppose one couldn't make Sadie understand," thought Margaret, "that she'd be better dressed with one frock of good material, simply and suitably made, than with all that huge closet full of cheap trash."

But she was wise enough not to attempt reforms, or even suggestions, in any direction, in her new home.

In view of the fact that Daniel's sisters lived here dependent upon him, as Margaret supposed, Sadie's abundant finery seemed to her rather extravagant. "He's a very indulgent brother," she decided.

Walter's wedding gift to her had been a check for fifty dollars, which she was sure he must have borrowed on his life insurance. She was at present using this for pocket money. It was characteristic of her not to give one anxious thought to the time when it would all be spent. She was scarcely aware of the fact that the subject of money had never yet come up between her and Daniel, and she would have been amazed indeed to know how often her husband tried in vain to broach the topic which was to him of such paramount importance, and to her so negligible a detail in a life full of interests that had nothing to do with money.

The attitude of Daniel's sisters toward him seemed to Margaret not by any means the least of the curiosities of her new life: their obsequious admiration of him, their abject obedience to every least wish of his, their minute attention to his physical comforts and to the fussy details of his daily routine, from his morning bath up to his glass of hot milk at bedtime.

"And they've done this all his life! No wonder he's a——"

But she checked, even to her own consciousness, any admission of what she really thought he was.

Daniel, meantime, discovering through the many social affairs to which he took his bride that she was so greatly admired by the men of his world as to make them look upon him with envy (and to be looked upon with envy was sweet to his soul), opened up his heart and his purse to the extent of suggesting to his wife and his sisters that they celebrate his marriage and return the lavish hospitality that had been extended to them in New Munich by giving a large reception.

It was one Saturday afternoon as they all sat together in the "sitting-room" after their midday dinner, Daniel's offices being closed on Saturday afternoon to give his large staff of clerks a half holiday. Jennie had pushed Daniel's own easy-chair to the open fire for him, and he was lounging in it luxuriously.

"And I'm going to do it up in style. I'll have a caterer from Philadelphia," he announced, to the astonishment of his sisters.

"Oh, Danny, a caterer yet!" breathed Sadie, awestruck.

"It'll come awful high, Danny!" Jennie warned him.

"I know it will. I know that. But all the same I'm going to do it!" responded Daniel heroically.

"Well," said Jennie, "I hope you'll tell the caterer, Danny, not to give us one of these lap-suppers the kind they had at Mrs. Congressman Ocksreider's, you mind. I like to sit up to a table when I eat. Mrs. Ocksreider's so stout, she hasn't got a lap, and it looked awful inconvenient to her. Oh, it was swell enough, to be sure, but you didn't get very full. We didn't overload our stomachs, I can tell you."

"We'll have small tables, then," Daniel agreed.

"Sadie," Jennie suddenly ordered her sister solicitously, "sit out of the window draft or you'll get the cold in your head yet."

Sadie obediently pulled her chair away from the window.

"I'm thirsty," Daniel announced; and at the word Jennie rose.

"I'll fetch you a drink, Danny."

In a moment she returned and stood by her brother's chair while he leisurely sipped the water she had brought him. This spectacle, a man's remaining seated while a woman stood, to which Margaret was becoming accustomed, had at first seemed to her quite awful.

"And you, Margaret," Daniel said as he sipped his water, "must have a new dress—gown, as you call it—for the party. You have worn those same two evening dresses of yours to about enough parties, I guess. Let Sadie help you choose a new one. And get something elegant and showy. I won't mind the cost. Sadie, you'll know what she ought to get; her own taste is too plain. I want her to do me credit!" he grinned, returning the empty glass to Jennie, who took it away.

"I'll help you pick out just the right thing," responded Sadie, eager for the orgy of planning a new evening costume, while Margaret, as she glanced at Sadie's ill-fitting, gay plaid blouse of cheap silk, made by a cheap seamstress, and at the coquettish patch of black court plaster off her left eye, concealed her amusement at her vision of herself in a garb of her sister-in-law's devising.

"Daniel," she suddenly said, wishing to divert the talk from clothes, and curious, also, to "try out" her husband on a certain point, "I'm thirsty."

Daniel, not yet very far recovered from the attentive lover stage, jumped up at once to get her a drink, quite as he would have done before their marriage, and Margaret smiled as she saw Jennie and Sadie look shocked at what she knew they felt to be her very unwifely attitude.

"My dears," she told them while Daniel was gone, "I've got to try to keep him in training, you spoil him so dreadfully."

"How high dare she go, Danny, for her new dress?" Sadie inquired when her brother returned with the water.

"Well, what do you pay for a party dress?"

"My new white silk cost me sixteen-fifty."

"That's a showy, handsome dress all right. You may spend twenty dollars, Margaret," he said magnanimously.

"We'll go downtown right after breakfast on Monday morning, Margaret," said Sadie, "and pick out the goods and take it to Mrs. Snyder, my dressmaker. She charges five dollars to make a dress, but she gives you your money's worth; she makes them so nice and fancy. Your dresses ain't fussed up enough, Margaret."

Margaret wondered what would be the effect upon them if she told them that just the mere making of one of her "plain" gowns, by a good dressmaker, had cost nearly twice what Daniel "allowed" her for the goods, "findings," and making of a new one. But she decided to spare them the shock.

"Simple clothes suit me better," she said. "Unless I go to a high-priced dressmaker, I can do much better making my gowns myself."

"But I don't begrudge the high price, Margaret," urged Daniel; "you let Sadie's Mrs. Snyder make you a dress."

"Yes," said Jennie with decision, "you can't appear among our friends any more, Margaret, in such plain-looking dresses as you've been wearing. It would really give me a shamed face if you weren't so—well, even in plain clothes, you're awful aristocratic looking, and you'll look just grand in the dress Sadie's Mrs. Snyder will make you for five dollars."

Though Margaret was perfectly willing to take a subordinate place in her husband's household, she no more dreamed of his sisters interfering in her personal affairs than she thought of interfering with theirs, so in spite of Jennie's authoritative tone, she answered pleasantly: "Too bad you don't like my Mennonite taste, for you know, I'd love to adopt the 'plain' garb of these Mennonite women and girls one sees on the streets on market days. What could be more quaint and fetching than their spotless white caps on their glossy hair? Ah, I think they're a sly lot, these Mennonite girls. Don't tell me they don't know how bewitching they look in their unworldly garb intended to put down woman's natural vanity! So I won't get a new gown just now."

"Why not, when Danny offers you the money?" asked Sadie, astonished, while Jennie frowned disapprovingly.

"Here," said Daniel, taking a bank book and a fountain pen from his pocket, and rapidly making out a check, "you take this, Margaret, and let Sadie's Mrs. Snyder make you a nice party dress."

Margaret laughed a little as she took the check, feeling it useless to explain to them how impossible it would be to buy with twenty dollars, even at a bargain sale, anything so beautiful as her two gowns made by a skilled and artistic designer and trimmed with her great-grandmother's Brussels rose point.

Daniel looked chagrined and his sisters rather indignantly surprised that she did not thank him for the money. He thought he was being tremendously generous. But Margaret, inasmuch as they had been married two months and this was the first money he had offered her, received it as a matter of course; her husband had, at the altar, endowed her with his "worldly goods" and what was his was hers; that was her quite simple view of their financial relation.

"I don't want to spend this on a gown, Daniel," she said to the consternation of her hearers, as she tucked it into the bosom of her blouse, "for I don't need any; the ones I have are really all right, my dear; far better than anything I've seen on any woman in New Munich."

"But I gave it to you for a frock!" Daniel exclaimed, his eyes bulging. "I want you to have a fancy, dressy frock for our reception."

"My dear," Margaret patted his bald head, "you know a lot more about law than about a woman's frocks. You leave that to me."

Before he could reply, the one maid of the household entered the room, and presented a card-plate to Jennie.

"More callers—what a pile!" said Jennie as she took ten cards from the plate.

"Yes, and it's only one lady in the parlour settin'!" exclaimed the Pennsylvania Dutch maid. "It wonders me that she gives me so many tickets!"

"Well, would you look, Danny! If it ain't Miss Hamilton!" exclaimed Jennie with a contemptuous shrug. "Ain't she got nerve!"

"What! Well, well! Tut, tut, tut!—my stenographer calling on my wife! Yi, yi! Because she and her parents sent us a little bit of a vase for a wedding gift, she has the presumption to think she can make your acquaintance, my dear!"

"That exquisite little Venetian glass vase!" said Margaret eagerly. "It's one of the loveliest gifts we received."

"It looks as if it cost fifty cents," commented Jennie. "And they're not just to say poor either; her father is the high school principal and her mother's the Episcopal Church organist."

"But why ten cards," asked Daniel, "if she came by herself?"

"Her father's and mother's cards as well as her own; and for all of us," explained Margaret as she glanced over them.

"And is that the proper way to do?" asked Daniel, impressed.

"It is in South Carolina; I can't answer for New Munich."

"Her puttin' on airs like that!" wondered Sadie, "when they ain't in society."

Margaret rose to go to the parlour. "Are you coming?" she asked of Jennie and Sadie.

"We are not acquainted with our Danny's hired clerk," said Jennie primly, "and don't wish to be. I'll call the hired girl back and tell her to excuse you, Margaret, and us, too."

"No, I want to meet Miss Hamilton. I've been anxious to make the acquaintance of the giver of that rare little vase; she must be a person of taste. Shall I, then, excuse you?" she asked the other two women, moving a step toward the door. But Daniel took her hand to detain her. "Have yourself excused; I'd rather you did; it's not well to mix business and society. It was bold of Miss Hamilton to come here, and we must not encourage her to come again."

Strangely enough, this sort of a contingency had not arisen before, for the simple reason that on every occasion, hitherto, when people had called whom Jennie and Sadie considered undesirable acquaintances for her, Margaret had happened to be out. They had either just thrown away the cards of such visitors, or had explained to Margaret that she must not return their visits. Margaret had not discussed the matter with them, but had kept the addresses of every visitor of whom she was informed, intending, of course, to call upon them all as soon as New Munich "society" would cease from its siege of entertaining her.

"But, Daniel," she patiently answered him, "I'm quite serious in telling you that a person who could select such a thing of beauty as that Venetian vase, I'm sure I shall find much more interesting than—than some of the people I've been meeting, kind and hospitable though they've been."

"But it's very bad policy to encourage familiarity in subordinates. She works for me, Margaret."

"Don't you see, Daniel, that's why it behooves me not to be excused to her?" she smiled, withdrawing her hand, patting his cheek, and sailing out of the room.

"But, Margaret!" he called after her, only to hear her voice in the room beyond greeting, with her Southern cordiality, his hired secretary.

Daniel looked the annoyance and astonishment he felt. If she would see Miss Hamilton, against his expressed wish, she needn't treat her like an equal—actually gush over her. Why! hear the two of them laughing and chattering over there in the parlour! She might at least be reserved and on her dignity with people beneath her.

"For goodness' sake, tell your wife, Danny," spoke in Jennie, voicing his own thought, "not to make herself so friendly and common to everybody. Your wife don't have to! She has the right to be a little proud with people. I tell her, still, when callers come, 'To this one you can be as common as you want; but to this one, not so common.' But she don't seem to understand; leastways, she don't listen to me; she's the same to everybody, whether or no. Or else she's just as likely as not to make herself common with a person like this Miss Hamilton and be awful quiet and indifferent-like with Mrs. Congressman Ocksreider and her daughter, or Judge Miller's family! You better talk to her and tell her what's what."

"It's funny," said Daniel, puzzled, "that she wouldn't know that much without being told."

"Yes, I think, then!" said Jennie, "and her as tony a person as what she seems to be."

"Yes, anyhow!" corroborated Sadie.

"Her being so friendly with everybody," continued Jennie, "is likely to make trouble when we come to send out invitations for your grand party. To be sure, the ones she made herself so common with will look to be invited; ain't?"

"But I want the party to be very exclusive, mind!" warned Daniel.

"To be sure you do. Trust me to see to that," promised Jennie.

"Will you hear those two in there laughing together like two school-girls!" wondered Sadie. "My goodness! And Miss Hamilton working for you for eight dollars a week!"

"I've had to raise her to ten," said Danny ruefully. "A lawyer in Lancaster offered her fifteen, and I couldn't let her go, she's too useful; so much better educated than the general run of stenographers. If she didn't prefer to live in New Munich with her parents, I'd have to compete with big city prices to keep her."

"Is she that smart, Danny?" Jennie asked, a touch of respect in her tone, her estimate of Miss Hamilton rising just two dollars' worth. "They say, too, that her father's such a smart high school teacher. Yes, they say the school board had to raise his salary, too, to keep him."

"It's very bad," said Daniel thoughtfully, "to have people who work for you know how valuable they are to you. Miss Hamilton knows she's worth money to me and so she gives herself airs—acts sometimes as though she hired me at ten dollars a week!—and then has the presumption to come here and call on my wife! I'd fire her if I could get any one half as good. But she knows she's got the whip-handle. It's much better, much better, for an employee to feel uncertain of his or her place. By the way," he added, drawing a purse from his pocket and taking a dollar from it, "you know we're all to go to Millerstown to have dinner at Hiram's to-morrow, so you'd better go out this afternoon, girls, and buy some presents for the four children. Here's a dollar—that's from Margaret and me; and if you each give fifty cents, that will make two dollars: enough to buy a nice little present for each one of them from all of us."

"All right, Danny," responded Jennie, taking the dollar. "I can get red booties for the baby, a hair ribbon for Naomi, a game for Zwingli, and a story book for Christian. Won't they be pleased?"

"And now," said Daniel, taking out his watch, "I've got just an hour to spare—let us make out the list of names for our party; for when Miss Hamilton goes, I'm going to 'phone for an automobile and take Margaret out for a little ride, and talk to her about some things."

XI

Margaret's instinct for self-preservation, being rapidly educated along new lines since her marriage, closed her lips in the presence of Jennie and Sadie upon the great delight she found in her new acquaintance, her husband's secretary; for though the standards of value which the Leitzels held as to most things in life had at first seemed to her incomprehensible, she was of late beginning to have a glimmering understanding of them. So, upon returning to the sitting-room after Miss Hamilton's call, she repressed any expression of her happiness, and not until she and Daniel were alone in the automobile which he had hired this afternoon for her pleasure, and incidentally for his own, did she speak of it. She had not yet learned the necessity of hiding from him, also, almost everything that she felt and thought.

"This is a red letter day for me, Daniel. I've found a friend! I've never had an intimate girl friend—oh! but I've yearned for one! Of all the many people I've met since I came here, there hasn't been one except that Miss Mary Aucker, who has since gone to Boston for the winter, whose society I'd prefer to that of a book or solitude. I'm not naturally a very good 'mixer,' I'm afraid, but in ten minutes Miss Hamilton and I—well, we simply found each other, deep down where we both live! It's such a novel and wonderful experience to me!" she softly exclaimed, her eyes shining. "It's going to give me the greatest happiness I've ever known!"

"The greatest happiness you've ever known! Why, Margaret——"

"I mean that I've ever known with a woman," she said soothingly.

"But, my dear!" he exclaimed, "what can you be thinking of? You can't make a friend of my secretary!"

"If she is a lady?"

"But she isn't. They don't go anywhere, these Hamiltons!"

"They are a cultured New England family, Daniel, and if they don't go into society here, it is probably because they don't want to. I'm sure I can't imagine why they should want to. I don't mean, dear," she quickly added, not at all sincerely, "to cast any reflection upon your New Munich society; I'm speaking of society in general. It is rather unsatisfactory, isn't it? I wouldn't give up the friendship I'm going to have with Miss Hamilton for all the rest of New Munich society, I assure you."

"But you must give it up! Why, my dear, the Hamiltons are renters!"

"'Renters?'"

"Yes, renters!"

"What are 'renters?'"

"You know what I mean—they don't own the house they live in, they rent it."

"Oh!" Margaret fell back laughing against the seat of the car. "Of course if I had known that, Daniel, I shouldn't have found Miss Hamilton congenial, sympathetic, and companionable. Oh, Daniel!" she gasped with laughing.

But Daniel's sense of humour was not developed.

"You must be on your guard more, my dear," he gravely warned her, "or you will be getting yourself involved most uncomfortably with troublesome people. Do let Jennie and Sadie be your guides as to whom you should cultivate here and whom keep at a proper distance."

"Jennie and Sadie be my—select my friends for me?"

"Instruct you as to those among whom you may select for yourself," he amended it. "They know New Munich and you don't."

"And they," thought Margaret wonderingly, "think themselves 'above' a cultured, sophisticated, well-bred girl like Miss Hamilton—they!"

"But, Daniel," she asked, genuinely puzzled, "that nice little woman that called yesterday, that I liked so much, said her husband was a grocer. I confess it rather shocked me. But you all seemed to approve of her. In New Munich is a grocer better than a teacher?"

"He's a wholesale grocer, which makes a vast difference, of course."

"Does it? And was the drygoods person who was with her also wholesale?"

"Mrs. Frantz? No, but she's rich, very rich. They own their handsome home at the head of our block. Listen, Margaret! While you were in the parlour with Miss Hamilton, Jennie and Sadie helped me make up the list for our party, and even I myself could not have discriminated more astutely than they did (Jennie especially) as to whom we ought to invite and whom we ought not. On Monday I'll have one of my office clerks address the envelopes for the invitations on a typewriter."

"Oh, my God, Daniel! You can't send typewritten invitations!"

"For goodness' sake, Margaret, cut out swearing! I'd be horribly mortified if any one heard you!"

Margaret was silent.

Daniel turned to glance at her uneasily, fearing he had offended her, but she was red with suppressed laughter and as she met his eye it broke forth in a little squeal.

"Oh, Daniel," she sighed, "swearing isn't as bad as slang, dear. I'd much rather hear you say 'Damn it' than 'cut it out.'"

She looked so pretty in her sable furs, another inheritance from an ancestor, that, the automobile being covered, he seized her face in his two hands and held his lips to hers for a long minute.

"Daniel," she said when he at last released her, "remind me to look over the list before you send the invitations. I may want to add some names."

"I don't think you will, dear. We drew up the list very carefully."

"I'll glance over it."

"But, Margaret," he firmly insisted, "the list is complete as it stands. You can't add any name to it that would not be objectionable to my sisters and me."

"I understand that the party is to be a large general affair, not small and exclusive? In that case, you know, we shall have to invite every one who has called and sent us gifts."

"Impossible! Why, our butcher sent us a gilt-framed Snow-Scene! and Sadie's dressmaker a souvenir spoon!"

"Then at least we must invite every one who has called on me."

"By no means. Wait until you have lived here long enough to have gotten your bearings and you'll see how right Jennie and Sadie and I are in drawing the line so carefully."

Margaret wisely desisted from further discussion of the matter, though she felt troubled by her conviction that she would certainly not find on that list the names of the few women of the town who had really interested her and who were probably "renters" or self-supporting or something else which, by the Leitzel standard, would class them with "dogs and sorcerers." But it was she and Daniel who were giving the party, and even though Jennie and Sadie did keep house for them, she was of course the nominal mistress of her husband's home and responsible for the courtesy or discourtesy extended to their acquaintances; and she did not like the idea of being made to appear a petty snob in the eyes of the few people of New Munich for whose opinion of her she cared. But what could she do about it?