Her Husband's Purse

XVI

Margaret did not, of course, think for an instant of giving up her friendship with Catherine Hamilton; but when she suggested the Hamilton family and a few other people whom she liked, but whose names were not on the invitation list, be invited to their big reception, she met with an opposition to which she was obliged to yield.

"To invite such folks as those Hamiltons, that don't even own their own home, little as it is—well, it would just lower the tone of the party, that's all!" Jennie pronounced.

"But I'll be responsible for keeping up the tone of the party!" Margaret gayly volunteered.

She quickly recognized, however, that in a matter like this, coöperation or compromise between the Leitzels and her was impossible and that she must stand aside and let them give their party in their own way. She carried her self-obliteration so far as to even refrain from suggesting, on the auspicious day of the party, the removal from the dining-room sideboard of the life-sized, navy-blue glass owl which was a water pitcher, and the two orange-coloured glass dishes that stood on easels on either side of the owl.

She did spend rather a troubled half-hour in wondering how, since the invitations were of course in her name and Daniel's, Catherine Hamilton would regard the fact that she was not invited. But the absurdity of the Leitzels' delusion that they could withhold or bestow social recognition upon her friend must be so manifest to Catherine that surely she could not take it seriously. It seemed to Margaret that to let this trifling, vulgar episode cast even a shadow upon the ideal friendship into which she and Catherine were growing was to belittle and dishonour it.

"I can't offer her any explanation. I can only trust to her large-minded understanding of my situation."

She had an uncomfortable consciousness that it was a situation which Catherine herself would not have tolerated.

"Even 'Hiram's Lizzie' considers it unbearable," she reflected. "Why, I can't offer any least hospitality to any one unless my sisters-in-law approve of the individual! I can't ask Catherine Hamilton to dine or lunch with me! Which means, of course, that I can't accept her hospitality. It's rather grotesque!"

Yet when she considered how devotedly Daniel's sisters served him, how minutely they attended to every little detail of his comfort, in a way most men, she was sure, would have found harassing, but which to Daniel seemed essential to his well-being, she knew that he would never be able, without great misery, to live apart from them, and that he certainly would not entertain the idea for a moment.

"And as for them, their occupation, their purpose in life, would be taken from them, if they didn't have Daniel to fuss over."

Two days before the date of the reception the evening papers gave New Munich a lurid description, furnished by Jennie and Daniel, of every detail of it, the Philadelphia caterer and the Lancaster florist being advertised in headlines that made Margaret's flesh creep. She had a vision of the consternation of her Charleston relatives should they ever see that paper, and she was thankful that the distance that separated her from them precluded the possibility of their learning of her association with such blatant vulgarity—unless (awful thought!) Daniel should be visited with the idea of mailing them a marked copy!

When, the next afternoon, Margaret was out for a country walk with Catherine Hamilton after office hours, she decided that it would be better to refer casually to the prospective party, rather than so obviously avoid mentioning it.

"Fancy me to-morrow night, Catherine, lined up with Mr. Leitzel and his sisters for two or three hours to shake hands with over one hundred people and make to each one precisely the same inspired remark: 'Mrs. Blank, how do you do? I am glad to see you. I am so glad you got here!' If I could only vary it a bit! But no, I shall have to say those self-same words exactly one hundred and seven times. Isn't it deplorable?"

A faint tremor in her voice as she asked the question caused her friend to turn and look into her face; and something in the strained expression of the beautiful eyes which Catherine Hamilton was growing to love moved this rather austere young woman to a sudden pity; for Catherine, though a girl of keen wit and of a strong, independent spirit, was full of feeling; a combination of qualities which gave her a charm for those of her own sex that she did not have for men.

Obeying an impulse of her heart, she suddenly stopped in the woodsy path where they walked, put her arms around Margaret and clasped her close.

And Margaret, at the unexpected touch of understanding love, almost the first she had ever known in her life, held herself rigid in her friend's embrace that she might not burst into passionate crying, while she clenched her teeth to choke down the pent-up emotion which in this moment could hardly keep its bounds.

She released herself quickly, and for an instant turned away.

When she again spoke, her voice was even and natural. She had not let herself shed one betraying tear.

"You promised to tell me, Catherine, about that career of yours, you know, to which your present work is a stepping-stone, and what my part is to be in it."

Catherine, eager to launch forth upon her hobby to her new friend, glowed with enthusiasm as she talked.

"I have come from a race, Margaret, that for generations have been teachers, college professors, ministers, public school superintendents—the pedagogue seems to be born in every one of us. And it's in me strong. So I am going to devote my life to the establishing of a school for girls in which all the training shall converge to one ideal—that of service—as over against that of the usual finishing school, whatever that ideal is! And, Margaret, here's my point: I'm going to make my school fashionable, a formidable rival of those futile, idiotic institutions in which girls from the country are taught how they must enter a drawing-room or step into an automobile, and are quite incidentally instructed, cautiously and delicately, in every 'branch' in the whole category of learning, so that they may be able to 'converse' on any subject whatever without betraying the awful depths of their ignorance!—the vast expanse of their shallowness. My school shall teach girls that life is meant for earnest work, because work means physical and spiritual health and happiness. My school shall make girls ashamed to admit they've ever been to the other sort of 'finishing' school. It's going to put that sort of school out of business, Margaret! I tell you, the coming woman is going to be the efficient woman. The unqualified of our sex will take a back seat, just as unqualified men do."

"I'm of course entirely in sympathy with your idea, Catherine, but I hope your 'service' education includes home-making and motherhood. Leave us a few of the old-fashioned women, won't you?"

"My dear, don't worry about homes and husbands and babies. It is the futile fashionable woman, not the disciplined, thoughtful, college-bred woman, that refuses to have children. I've never known an earnest woman that didn't love children and yearn for motherhood. The trouble is, men are afraid of the earnest kind. They marry the frivolous, parasitical women, who live upon them like lotus flowers, sapping their vitality and giving nothing in return. Yet you'll find men opposing college education for women, not realizing that a woman who has stood the discipline of a college course has developed a force of character that does not shrink for a moment from the further discipline and burden of motherhood, but welcomes it as her privilege and blessing, while the so-called 'society woman' will none of it. You know," Catherine continued, "in the days when home-making was necessarily an absorbing occupation, it lent to women a dignity of character quite wanting in our present-day large class of feminine parasites, a class that has grown out of the new and easier domestic conditions and the too-great concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. That's the explanation of woman's latter-day restlessness; she's fighting against the deterioration which comes with idleness and too-easy conditions of life. She's fighting for her very life! That's what the 'feminist movement' means."

"And my part in your fine scheme?" asked Margaret, her face glowing with responsive enthusiasm.

"As a rich and influential woman, you will countenance and patronize my school; perhaps send me your daughters; be a stock-holder in it; you can even be fitting yourself, meantime, if you like, to be a teacher in it."

"But, Catherine—'rich and influential?' I? I am neither!"

Catherine looked at her curiously. "What do you call 'rich,' Margaret?"

"Oh, I don't know. I've never handled money in my life. I've always had everything I actually required right at my hand. I am afraid I am absurdly ignorant about money. I never had any of my own."

As Margaret spoke, she glanced up to meet in Catherine's eyes a puzzled, questioning expression which she failed to interpret.

"But surely you know that Mr. Leitzel is very rich?" said Catherine.

"It is such a relative term. My sister's family think themselves awfully poor, but they live more comfortably and spend money more freely than the Leitzels do. Of course I understand that you Northerners are all more frugal than Southerners are," she ended vaguely.

Catherine laughed oddly. "You are an innocent!"

"I'm beginning to realize that I am," nodded Margaret, feeling a something behind Catherine's tone and countenance that she did not quite get.

"I might have been reared in a convent for all I've seen of life, Catherine."

"Yet you've not lacked the essentials," returned Catherine with evident relief at turning the talk from the subject of money.

"The essentials to what?"

"To making you a truly fine and charming woman. You've lived in an environment of culture, of big ideas; and you've had no sordid money cares to embitter you or blunt the sensitive fineness of your spirit."

"But my life has lacked one great essential, Catherine—affection, love."

"Your uncle must have loved you, dear, he must have. For you are lovable, you know. Well, rather!"

"He loved me as his handmaid who kept him comfortable. If ever I tried to be affectionate with him, he would act like a hyena!"

"If he was human, he loved you!"

"He wasn't human, that was it. He had all run to intellect and hadn't a vulnerable spot left."

"Did you love him?"

"I wanted to, but he wouldn't have it. When he died, I did miss him keenly, he had grown to be a habit with me; a stimulant, too. No one could live with Uncle Osmond and not keep very much alive. So of course my life seemed suddenly very empty without him: he had been my chief care and thought for so many years. I suppose I shall never quite get over missing him. But I can't say I ever really grieved for him."

When about a half-hour later, at the end of an exhilarating and satisfying time together which put a new seal upon their friendship, the two young women parted to go to their homes, Catherine considered, as she walked slowly, to give herself time to think, how strange it was that she, as Mr. Daniel Leitzel's confidential secretary, knew so very much more about him and his affairs than did his own wife.

"She actually does not know that she has married a multi-millionaire. And I don't believe it would impress her greatly to discover that she had. She is unique! For a woman like Margaret to find herself tied up with those Leitzels, oh!" Catherine laughed to herself at what seemed to her the extreme absurdity of the combination. "But it is so tragic, too! Why on earth did she marry him if not for his money? Will she, I wonder, ever reach the point of telling me why she did? No," she shook her head conclusively, "not so long as she continues to live with him will any one ever hear one disloyal syllable from her, I'm sure. If she ever came to the point of rectifying by divorce the blunder she made in marrying him, for whatever mysterious reason, then perhaps she'll explain herself to me."

Catherine wondered how long it would take Margaret to find out that she was married to one of the richest men in the state.

"If I ever see her inconvenienced by lack of funds, I'll enlighten her with some facts and figures known only to her husband and myself," she resolved. "Even I don't know all he has, though I do know what the public doesn't dream of."

She was aware that her employer had, before ever trusting her with any knowledge of his financial affairs, tested and proved her to be a very safe repository of his secrets.

"But his wife, supposed to be one with himself and endowed with all his worldly goods, has a right to know the extent of them. If I don't supply her with any actual facts (which would, of course, roll from her like drops of mercury, leaving no least impression), I can, without treachery to Mr. Leitzel, give her to understand that her husband doesn't spend, in the course of a year, more than one thirtieth of the interest on his capital."

She doubted, however, whether even a succinct statement like that would make any difference to Margaret unless she became a mother; for Catherine believed she had succeeded, though with some difficulty, in impressing upon her friend her own theory that the divine right of motherhood ought to make a woman, by law, a full and equal partner in all her husband's "worldly goods."

"I certainly did have a time persuading her that my theory is of any importance in our modern social economy. Wait until the poor child learns to know the Pennsylvania Dutch idea of woman's economic position, and until she begins to get a little acquainted with the man she has married!"

She drew a long breath as she reached the front door of her "rented" home. "Well," she concluded, "my intimacy with my employer's wife promises some excitement!"

XVII

In spite of the forbearance which Margaret felt she had exercised in her desire to be scrupulously considerate of Daniel and his sisters in everything pertaining to the party, the night of this much-advertised "social event" found her in serious disfavour not only with her sisters-in-law, but with her husband himself; first, because of her persistence in ignoring their dictation as to the sort of gown she should wear; secondly, their discovery that she was taking daily walks with Miss Hamilton; for though Margaret would not stoop to any secrecy as to her relation with Daniel's secretary, yet she had not gone out of her way to publish it, and so the walks had been going on for some time before her three monitors learned of them; thirdly, the exception they had taken to her telling some callers, by whose patronage they felt honoured, that she could not afford a new set of furs! Mrs. Ocksreider had spoken admiringly of the furs she had seen Margaret wearing one day and had asked where she had bought them, and Margaret had replied that she had never bought any furs in her life; that she had always been too poor (Danny's wife admitting poverty!), and that these furs had been her grandmother's!—telling Mrs. Ocksreider, of all people, that she wore her grandmother's old clothes!

But Mrs. Ocksreider's reply had been puzzling to Jennie and Sadie:

"Oh, but my dear Mrs. Leitzel, to have had a grandmother who wore sable! It ought to admit you to the D.A.R's! No wonder you flaunt them and refuse to buy new ones!"

Then Margaret had further mortified them before this same formidable social leader of New Munich by refusing her invitation to join the Women's Auxiliary of the Episcopal Church, which, as Jennie and Sadie well knew, was made up of New Munich's "leading society ladies"; so what was their horror to hear Margaret reply, "It's very charitable of you to fancy that I'd be of the least use to you. But I've always hated Women's Auxiliaries!" And she said it with such a musical drawl that Mrs. Ocksreider, instead of showing how offended she must be, had laughed as though she found it funny. But the idea of saying you hated Women's Auxiliaries! It was next thing to saying that you hated the Bible! Never had Jennie and Sadie experienced such a painful half-hour as that of this call.

Fourthly, Daniel's sisters had at last discovered, through persistent prying, that his wife did not have an independent income; and Margaret, her wits sharpened by her new environment to recognize things at first unthinkable to her, saw that this discovery made Jennie and Sadie feel more free than ever to dictate to her and interfere with her liberty.

All these little episodes combining to bring upon her the displeasure of the household, the night of the party found her in a not very cheerful frame of mind, though the deep satisfaction that was hers in the great friendship that had come into her life, the most vital human relation that she had ever known, made it impossible for these smaller things to disturb her fundamentally, as otherwise they might have done.

There had been one event of that day that had somewhat brightened for her the gloom of the home atmosphere: a belated wedding-gift had come from Daniel's step-mother—a patchwork quilt—accompanied by a letter addressed to Daniel and his wife, written for the old woman by the district school teacher.

"'It's a very humble present I am sending you,'" Daniel had read the letter aloud at the breakfast table. "'But it's the work of my old hands, dear children, the last I'll ever do—and the love of my heart went into every stitch of it. I was so proud that you sent me such a notice of your wedding; to remember your old mother, Danny, when you were so happy yourself. I've been working on the quilt ever since I got the notice about the wedding already, and now I'd like so well to see your wife, Danny. I'll try, if I am strong enough, to take the train in, one of these days, and see you both. I'll come back the same day so as not to make any of you any extra work or trouble. I would like to see the lady you married, Danny, before I die, and give her an old woman's wishes for a happy, useful life with my good son that I am so proud of. I wish I could live long enough to see your first baby, Danny, but I guess it won't be many months any more before I must go to my long home.'"

"Yes, that's always the way she talks—she 'hasn't long to live' just to work on our feelings so as to make us give her more!" Jennie commented. "She has no need to come in here to see Margaret. She makes herself very bold to offer to. And she can't spare the car fare, little as what she has to go on. What's Margaret to her anyhow? And she's likely to be too feeble to get back if she comes in. Then we'd have her on our hands yet!"

But Margaret had spent an hour of the morning in writing to Mrs. Leitzel, acknowledging her gift, telling her how glad she would be to see one who had done so much for Daniel when he was a boy. For their step-mother's self-sacrificing devotion to them all in their childhood had been made known to Margaret through many an unwitting, significant remark dropped in her presence. She concluded her letter:

I am coming out to see you very soon, certainly some day next week. Daniel will bring me if he has time. If not, I'll go myself. Until then; with my heartfelt thanks for the work of your dear hands, which I shall use with pride and with grateful thoughts of you,

I am your affectionate daughter,
    MARGARET BERKELEY LEITZEL.

All that day, through the constant little rasping antagonisms which Margaret, despite her good intentions, seemed unable to avert in any intercourse between herself and the Leitzels, she felt that consolatory bit of kindness and good will which had come to her from the old woman in the country. And when she stood at night with her husband and his sisters to receive their guests (Sadie in pink satine) the friendly spirit of her aged mother-in-law was with her still in the background of her consciousness, softening the light of her eyes and making human the perfunctory smile of her lips as she repeated her conventional formula of greeting over and over; so that people marvelled at the apparent continued tranquillity of this incongruously assorted household.

When later in the evening Margaret was free to move about among her guests, Daniel's cold displeasure with her was greatly modified as he witnessed again to-night, as on many previous occasions, how attractive she undoubtedly was to the men of his world. His uncannily keen little eyes read in the faces of his male guests, as they approached and talked with Margaret, the covetousness they felt for this rare possession of his. No acquisition of all his acquisitive career had ever given him a more delectable joy than his realization of the worth, in other men's eyes, of his charming wife.

Had he overheard the view of her which was ventilated, though surreptitiously, by some of the guests over their supper, his satisfaction might have been somewhat modified.

"I think she's a scream!" declared Myrtle Deibert to the group at her table. "Did you hear what she said to me as we were leaving the Country Club dance last Wednesday evening, when I remarked to her, 'Your husband is so awfully in love with you, Mrs. Leitzel; just see how he is beaming on you from clear across the room!' 'Scowling at me, you mean,' she corrected me. 'Don't you hear our taxicab registering out there while I linger to talk to you?"

This anecdote was met with a shout of laughter, the point of which would certainly have remained obscure to Daniel Leitzel.

"Of course you all heard of her telling mother," said Miss Ocksreider, "that she hated Women's Auxiliaries? And that she wore her grandmother's old furs because she couldn't afford to buy new ones? Mother says"—she lowered her voice and the group at the table closed in a bit closer to catch her words—"that it was a perfect circus to see the consternation of Miss Jennie and Miss Sadie when she said she was poor. Isn't it queer how they are so proud of their money and yet so afraid to spend it?"

"Did you hear," inquired Mrs. Eshelman, "what Mrs. Leitzel said to me last Sunday after church when I told her I'd put a five-dollar gold piece on the collection plate in mistake for a nickel and I had half a mind to ask the usher to let me have it back. 'You might as well,' she said, 'for you know the Lord won't give you credit for more than five cents.'"

"She certainly does go to the ragged edge," Mr. Eshelman added his quota; "I asked her this evening whether she had been to hear the evangelist's address to Women Only, and she said no, what she wanted to hear was a talk to Men Only!"

"What do you think she said to me when I told her," said Mrs. Hostetter, "what a bad boy the son of the Presbyterian pastor is. 'This proverbial badness of minister's children,' she said, 'is often, I think, just the hypocrisy of the minister breaking out.' 'But all ministers are not hypocrites,' I said to her, shocked. 'Of course, unconsciously hypocrites,' she answered. 'They don't deceive any one else as they deceive themselves.' Isn't she queer?" added Mrs. Hostetter, genuinely puzzled.

"She's a peach!" declared Mr. Hostetter.

"Danny must think so," declared Mr. Eshelman, "to open up like this in her honour!" indicating the elaborate supper provided by the city caterer. "Terrapin, mind you, at Danny Leitzel's!"

"And the 'floral decorations!'" breathed Miss Deibert with an appreciative glance at the roses and palms that decorated the dining-room. "It doesn't seem possible, does it?"

"This party is costing Danny something!" grinned Hostetter.

"And to think," said Mrs. Hostetter, "that Dan Leitzel has married a penniless bride—as she certainly gives it out that she is! It doesn't seem possible."

"The power of one little woman!" said Mr. Hostetter pensively. "I tell you that girl's eyes, and her voice, and her figger, and her teeth and lips, would melt any man's heart, even one of flint like Dan Leitzel's!"

"That will do, Jacob!" stiffly admonished Mrs. Hostetter.

"Will you look at that blue glass owl on the sideboard," said Miss Ocksreider. "Wouldn't you think Mrs. Leitzel would have removed it before this party?"

"She wouldn't dare! Miss Jennie thinks it's choice!" responded Mrs. Eshelman. "She got it ten years ago at the ninety-nine-cent store for Danny's Christmas present, and she told me at the time that she knew it was an awful price to pay for a mere pitcher, but that they needed a handsome ornament for the top of their sideboard. No, indeed, Mrs. Leitzel wouldn't dare discard that old owl!"

"How she manages to steer her way peaceably among the three members of this household!" murmured Miss Deibert.

"She's a wonder!"

"And she certainly knows how to keep her opinions to herself," said Mrs. Hostetter. "No one gets a word out of her as to what she thinks of her in-laws!"

"Then she is a wonder!" volunteered Hostetter.

"Wouldn't I like to be her father confessor!" exclaimed Miss Deibert. "I don't know what I wouldn't give for an X-ray view of her mind!"

It was a curious fact that the only person present at the Leitzels' notable party who was quite unimpressed by the expensiveness of the affair was Margaret herself.

What did impress her, as she chatted with her guests and ate her supper, was the subtlety with which one can be penetrated by the spiritual atmosphere of a given group; she felt so acutely that of this gathering to-night as compared with the fine aroma of any social collection of her Southern environment, with its old inherited simplicity and culture. She had thought, in the first weeks of her New Munich life, that the difference must be only external, for she was not only democratically disposed by nature, but the rather socialistic theories with which her uncle had imbued her inclined her to a large view of any social discrepancies.

To-night, however, it was borne in upon her that she was an alien in this company; that she could more readily find a real point of contact and sympathy with the plainest sort of day-labouring people; with, for instance, the Leitzels' cook, who was at least genuine and not pretentious, than with these people who knew no ideals except those of material possession and whose purpose in life seemed to be, on the part of the women, to outshine their acquaintances and kill time; and on that of the men to make money enough to allow the women to pursue this useful and exalted career.

"People who are poor enough to be obliged to work," she spoke out her reflections to the lawyer, Henry Frantz, who happened to be sipping coffee with her, "have really purer and more wholesome views of life than—than we have" (she indicated, by a turn of her hand, the company at large). "I begin to understand, Mr. Frantz, why, in the history of nations, we see decay set in just as soon as a climax of prosperity has been reached. To survive the deadening influence of great wealth, well, it's only the fittest among nations and individuals who are strong enough to do it, isn't it?"

"But it is only where there is a leisure class that we find art and culture," suggested Mr. Frantz.

"The great minds and the great characters of the world, however, have never come from an environment of wealthy leisure. In our own country, has any one of our really great Presidents been educated in private schools? Nearly every citizen of eminent usefulness is a public school product."

"A notable exception—your husband," he replied.

"'Citizen of eminent usefulness,'" she musingly experimented with her phrase. "Would Mr. Leitzel come under that head?"

"He's a lawyer of state-wide, if not national, reputation, Mrs. Leitzel."

"I know. Are they an eminently useful class—corporation lawyers? I merely ask for information. My ignorance on most subjects is unfathomable."

"Well, we couldn't get along without them."

"Corporations couldn't. But aren't we beginning to think we could get along without corporations?"

"Boneheads may think so. It is civilization that has built up corporations, and every time a corporation is dissolved we take a backward step in civilization."

"If public utilities," said Margaret dogmatically, quoting her Uncle Osmond, "were conducted for the benefit not of corporations, but by the Government for the benefit of the whole people, we'd have a full treasury without taxing the people."

Mr. Frantz looked at her and broke into irrepressible laughter. "Excuse me, Mrs. Leitzel, but that anything looking so girlish and pretty, that anything even remotely associated with my good friend Danny Leitzel, should be giving out remarks like that—well, it's a little too much for me, you see! Did you and my friend Danny exchange views on social economics before you were married?"

"We didn't have time to exchange views on anything. We knew each other just six weeks before we were married."

"And have been getting acquainted since?"

"I'm inclined to think a six weeks' acquaintance just as good as a lifetime one for finding out what kind of a mate your lover is going to make."

"Exactly. No good at all, eh?"

"Not much," she smiled.

"I wonder," speculated Mr. Frantz, eying her curiously, "if there was ever a married pair whose ideal of each other grew higher after marriage. Think so?"

"Surely. Their lives being a daily unfolding of new beauties and excellences to each other."

"Oh, but I'm afraid you're a sentimentalist."

"Southerners generally are, but they're saved, you know, by their unfailing sense of humour," she responded, turning from him to give some attention to the man seated on the other side of her at the little supper table.

Mrs. Leitzel's adroitness in avoiding thin ice was the despair of the gossips of New Munich.

XVIII

Margaret's radiant happiness in the discovery she made on the very day after the party, that she was embarked on the wonderful passage to motherhood, fraught with its strangely mingled suffering and bliss, was somewhat tempered by the consciousness that the coming child would have to be a Leitzel; there was no escaping that catastrophe. She tried to persuade herself that the Leitzel characteristics, if properly educated, might not be so very lamentable; but her deep-down conviction that her child ran the risk of inheriting a small, mean soul gave her no little anxiety and self-reproach.

"My penalty for trying to compromise with life's austerities!" she grimly told herself with sad misgiving.

Her husband's joy and pride in the prospect of being a father consoled her somewhat, it was so human and normal of him; though even here the taint of greed entered in, he was so inordinately pleased that his money would not have to be left to Hiram's children.

Indeed, during the earlier weeks of her pregnancy, Margaret tried hard to keep her mind off the topics discussed in the bosom of the family, so fearful was she of the effect, upon her child, of her own recoil from the Leitzel view of life.

She found that they never would get done talking about the cost of that party; it was evidently going to occupy them for the rest of their mortal lives. The worst of it was they so insisted upon impressing it upon her.

"Hiram never spent that much for a party for his Lizzie, and she brought her husband thirty thousand dollars. It ain't many husbands that would so spend for a wife that—well, don't you think, too, Margaret, that Danny's awful generous considering?"

"Considering what, Jennie?"

"Ach, Margaret, don't be so dumb! Considering you ain't got anything."

"Oh, yes, I have something—youth and health and intelligence and good temper. I'm a prize. Daniel thinks so."

"But you see," interposed Sadie, "our Danny could have had any of our rich town girls here."

"And yet preferred me. His good taste. The only instance of it I've ever noticed."

She knew the puzzled despair of her husband's sisters over their inability to make her humbly grateful for that she, a penniless bride, had been "chosen" by their brother. But that she should fail to appreciate the expenditure for the party given in her honour was too much.

"Why, Danny's bills come to three hundred dollars yet!" Jennie told her with heat. "And Sadie ain't well yet from over-eating that rich supper we had that night off of the Philadelphia caterer!"

"Yes, I feel it yet," said Sadie plaintively. "Just to think, Margaret, that Danny spent three hundred dollars for the party for you!"

"Did he get off so easily as that? The flowers were so abundant and the supper so nice, I would have supposed they would have cost more than that, if I had thought about the cost."

"Well, why didn't you think about the cost, when it was all for you?"

"I didn't think about it, my dears, because the cost of things doesn't interest me; I have so many more interesting things to think about. This, for instance," she said, holding up the dainty baby dress on which she had been sewing as they all sat together in the sitting-room, awaiting Daniel's coming home to his noon dinner.

"But it's a wife's place to——"

Daniel's entrance cut short Jennie's admonitions. The dinner-table talk, however, scarcely relieved the tension on Margaret's nerves.

Daniel was always expansive as to his business "deals" when he felt complacent, and to-day his state of mind was one of unusual satisfaction, for just before dinner Margaret had displayed to him (surreptitiously, to spare the virgin squeamishness of Jennie and Sadie) the baby things upon which she had been working, and his delight in them was like unto that of a woman. He was therefore talkative and confidential over his roast beef.

"Well, Margaret, you can be proud of the way your husband upholds Christian principles in this community. I received in my morning's mail a letter from the Board of Managers of the Y.W.C.A. thanking me for the stand I took at the meeting yesterday afternoon of the stockholders of the Country Club on the question of Sunday sports. Some of the men want tennis and golf allowed on Sunday, but I stand for the sanctity of the Sabbath, and I wouldn't give in one inch. I'm the biggest stockholder of the club and they can't go against my vote in anything. I may say I rule the Country Club. One fellow, Abe Meyers, got up and declared he'd organize a new country club before he'd 'submit to the tyranny of one hidebound Pharisee!' What do you think of that?" chuckled Daniel. "'The tyranny of one hidebound Pharisee!' Sour grapes, of course. He hasn't the cash or the influence to organize another club. I told them that so long as I was a member of that club, the sanctity of the Sabbath should be preserved. Golf and tennis six days of the week, but on the Sabbath, no sports; and I said I knew I had behind me the support of our Christian community. You see, Margaret, if I withdrew, the club couldn't go on."

"That very fact," said Margaret, her voice rather weak, "ought, I should think, make you unwilling to impose your theories upon the other members. Noblesse oblige, you know."

But Daniel was incapable of seeing this point of view.

"The evening papers," he continued, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction, "will give a full account of the meeting yesterday and publish, also, the letter of thanks sent to me by the Y.W.C.A. I handed that letter to a reporter of the Intelligencer. You'll see it in to-night's paper, Margaret."

"Oh!" breathed Jennie and Sadie, awe and admiration in their tones, and worship in the glances sent across the table to Daniel. "Here, Emmy," Jennie ordered the maid, "don't you see Mr. Danny's milk glass is empty? Fill it up. Do you like these pickles, Danny? They're the first I opened yet."

"They're of just precisely the degree of sourness I like," Daniel nodded approvingly.

"Danny's so much for sour," Jennie informed Margaret. "Yes, you took notice already, I guess, how he eats sour all the time at his meals, even up to his pie. I have to put up a lot of pickles and Chili sauce and chow-chow for him. Ain't, Danny? And he says no one's sour tastes so good to him as what mine does. I don't know what he would do," she said in consternation, "if I was taken and he couldn't have his sour any more."

"There's Heinz's fifty-seven varieties," said Margaret.

"Heinz!" scoffed Jennie. "Our Danny eat that Heinz stuff, used as he is to good home-made sour! Well, Margaret, you don't mean to tell me you'd feed that to our Danny! I'd turn in my grave!"

"I'd 'feed him' Heinz's fifty-seven varieties and tell him I'd made them myself; a plan, you see, which would make Daniel happy while it saved my time and energies for something more useful than pickles."

"You'd deceive him?" exclaimed Sadie, scandalized. "Tell a lie to your own husband yet!"

"Is a lie ever justifiable?" asked Margaret ponderously. "History and psychology answer, Yes; to the insane, the nervously distorted, and to spoiled and pampered men creatures."

"Well, you'd have a hard time fooling our Danny! He ain't so easy fooled. A good thing he's got us to look after him if you wouldn't even put up sour for him!"

"Now I begin to see," said Margaret, "that the man, Heinz, creator of 'sour,' is a human benefactor and should have a noble monument erected to him by put-upon wives. I'll start the movement."

"A stroke of luck," Daniel here broke into the dispute, "came to me to-day. You remember, Margaret, the leather store on the corner of Third and Prince streets?"

"Yes."

"Danny owns near that whole block," Jennie quickly informed her, though Margaret's persistent indifference to such facts was a constant irritation to her and Sadie.

"I've been getting one hundred dollars a month rent for that store," Daniel stated, while his sisters listened breathlessly to such fascinating statistics. "Three months ago, George Trout, the renter, came to me and said he'd have to have more storeroom for his growing business and wanted me to extend the room back into the lot. He laid it off to me how I ought to do this for him because he had rented that room from me for the past fifteen years and had never been a day late with his rent, not even when I had suddenly and unexpectedly raised his rent two years ago from seventy-five to one hundred dollars a month; and he argued that he himself had paid for the repairs and the upkeep of his storeroom for the past eight years; that his successful leather shop had increased the value of my property; and that I certainly owed it to him to extend the floor space. Well, I simply told him that if the place was too small for him, he was perfectly welcome to move; that I certainly wouldn't incur the expense of enlarging the store when I could so easily rent it any time as it was. He argued and fussed 'round my office and said he'd been my faithful tenant for fifteen years and I had never done a thing for him and that I knew perfectly well he couldn't move his business, for there wasn't another vacant storeroom in the town in a location that wouldn't kill his business dead. Yes, I said I knew that all right. 'And,' said he, 'I absolutely require more floor space.' 'Yes, I know that, too,' I said, 'but it's no concern of mine; I have no stock in your business, Mr. Trout. I'm your landlord, and you know business is always strictly business with me. I can rent that storeroom the very hour you move out of it.' He tried to tell me again about his keeping up the repairs, but I cut that short and said he'd got my answer and now I was busy. Well, I certainly was amused to see how mad he looked as he flung himself out of my office. But," said Daniel, his eyes narrowing to the look of cunning from which Margaret was learning to wince as from a touch on a bared nerve, "the affair has turned out just as I foresaw it would! That's the secret of my success, Margaret, as Jennie and Sadie can tell you. I look at every proposition, no matter how small a one, to find in it the main chance—the chance for me. I saw there'd be only one thing for Trout to do: enlarge the store at his own expense. No more than right that he should. No least reason why I should do it."

"Of course not!" exclaimed Jennie and Sadie in one breath, while Margaret, looking rather wan, did not raise her eyes from her plate, for the self-complacency of her husband's countenance, as he told his yarn, was more than she could stand.

"So, last week," Daniel went on, "when the changes in the storeroom were completed, I went in and took a look around. Trout spent about eight hundred dollars on the job. Of course this enlargement increases the value of the property and demands higher rent. So, yesterday," Daniel smiled, "I notified him that his rent was raised twenty-five dollars a month. He came storming into my office and said the bills for the repairs should be sent to me. I pointed out to him that I couldn't be held legally responsible for them, as I had not had them made; and that he could take his choice: pay the increased rent or get out. Well, you see, there was nothing else for him to do but pay the higher rent. Anything else spelt ruin for him. He knew that as well as I did. He had to swallow the pill," grinned Daniel, "though it did go down hard! Yes, that's the way I turn things, even little things, right around to my profit, Margaret. Pretty cute, isn't it?"

"If I were Mr. Trout," Margaret returned, looking white, "I'd set fire to your damned store and burn it to the ground!"

There was an instant's silent, awful consternation, when Margaret suddenly laid down her napkin and rushed from the room, every nerve in her sick and quivering with the physical and moral disgust she felt.

When before returning to his office Daniel went to their bedroom, where Margaret, weak and despairing, lay prone upon the bed, he found the door locked against him.

"I insist upon coming in, Margaret!"

"Go away!" she faintly called.

"Open the door!" he commanded.

"I won't! I can't! I don't dare to! I'm dangerous! Go away from me!"

"Get up and open this door!"

"If I did, I'd—I'd scratch you! Keep away from me!"

Daniel telephoned for the doctor.

"My gracious!" exclaimed Jennie, as they all awaited the coming of the physician in the sitting-room, "Hiram's Lizzie never carried on like this when she was expecting!"

"No, she certainly didn't," echoed Sadie; "for all she might have had a little more right to; while Margaret, here, coming to Danny without nothing at all, up and sasses him like what she did at dinner yet! Don't it wonder you?"

Daniel, lounging in his own big chair before the fire, pouted like a thwarted, spoiled child.

"What got into her, anyhow, to act so hystericky all of a sudden?" Sadie speculated.

"Saying she'd set fire to Danny's store!" exclaimed Jennie indignantly. "And swearing yet! My gracious!"

"It certainly does, now, beat all!" said Sadie mournfully.

"I certainly didn't think she'd turn out like this!" scolded Jennie. "You hadn't ought to have picked out a wife, Danny, without me looking her over for you first."

"I can't do anything with her!" snapped Daniel spitefully. "Nothing I can say will make her stop running with Catherine Hamilton. She tells me to my face she won't give her up. And she won't, either!"

"Och, Danny, I wouldn't take it off of her!" said Jennie harshly.

"Well, what can a man do?" he fretfully demanded.

"Discharge Miss Hamilton."

"She's invaluable to me. She's in my confidence in a business way. I can't discharge her. It wouldn't matter to her anyway. Every lawyer in town that has any practice would like to employ her. What I'm afraid of is that she'll resign. Oh, if she were afraid of losing her job, then I could easily fix Margaret!"

"It looks, Danny, as if Margaret took up with your clerk just to spite and worry you; for what else would she run with her for?"

"Well, if you'd hear them talking together once!" Daniel sullenly responded.

"Well, if we did?" questioned Jennie curiously.

"You wouldn't understand a word they were saying!" snapped her brother.

"Do they talk so dumb?" asked Sadie wonderingly.

"They seem to think it means something—the stuff they get off to each other!"

"It certainly does spite me, Danny," said Jennie with sympathetic indignation, "to have your wife use you like this! And when I think how you could have married most anybody!"

"Here comes the doctor," announced Sadie. "Supposing she won't leave him in her room?"

"Och, but that would make talk!" exclaimed Jennie. "I'll go up and tell her she has to open!"

Margaret, meantime, her sudden gust of passion subsided, realized how foolishly she was acting.

"I can't say I didn't marry him with my eyes open," she prodded herself. "I have no right to scorn him and fly out at him. I see that well enough, alas! I owe him everything I can reasonably give him to make up for my lack of love."

Her sense of her obligation to Daniel did not, however, and never could, include the denial of such fundamental principles as her friendship with Catherine Hamilton, or her own personal freedom in so far as it did not clash with his just rights.

Margaret was not so stupid as to suppose for a moment that she could, by any utmost effort on her part, lead Daniel to see a case like that of George Trout's store rent as she saw it. That he could flaunt and boast of such "deals" proved him too hopelessly obsessed.

"If he were ashamed of it and tried to hide it, there might be some hope of redeeming him. As it is, I certainly shan't waste myself in any such futile endeavour. But if I outlive Daniel, I shall pay to George Trout or his heirs that eight hundred dollars on the very day that I get possession of my widow's third. Or, if I have a son, he shall discharge that debt!"

However, by the time Jennie knocked on her door demanding admission for the doctor, she was in a sufficiently chastened frame of mind to receive both him and her husband with all the outward semblance of a dutifully happy wife.

XIX

Accustomed as Margaret was to the Southern ideal of the chivalry due to a pregnant wife; reared in a state where a fundamental principle of marriage is that the husband's share in the burden and sacrifice of bringing a child into being shall consist in cherishing the mother of his child with reverence and tenderness, so that her difficult ordeal be made as bearable as unselfish love can make it, and that she be upheld throughout her trial by the man's strength and devotion; and that the husband who did not so regard his wife was a cur to be horsewhipped—Margaret had to learn, during her weary, waiting months, that this attitude of the Southern gentleman would have seemed to the average Pennsylvania German ridiculous sentimentality, his view being that woman was created, in the Providence of God, to be a breeder and that was all there was to it; that in merely fulfilling her natural function she was in no more need of sympathy or help or compassion than a cow in the same condition; that her inclination during pregnancy to tears, tantrums, fretfulness, indolence, a muddy complexion, a phlegmatic indifference to everything except the making of baby clothes, not even her husband getting, at this time, any consideration to speak of at her hands—these things were recognized by him as burdens to be borne either with stoicism, or, for the sake of the child, peremptorily prohibited.

So, it was a matter of wonder to Margaret, rather than of distress, that Daniel should be so extremely moderate in his expression of concern or sympathy for her condition. So used as he was to being taken care of by his sisters, it would have been a wholly unnatural attitude on his part, she saw, to be actively solicitous for a woman. He would have felt he lowered his dignity and made himself absurd if he had put himself out for her comfort in the many little ways he might have done and which she had at first looked to see him do.

But, as Daniel told her one day when she expressed some of the wonder she felt at his lack of chivalry toward her, he had never seen Hiram bother about Lizzie when she was in that condition, and it was after all only Nature.

"A baby's teething is only Nature, but we help and comfort it, don't we? I did expect you'd get a little bit excited over my health! It would all be so much easier to bear," she spoke rather to herself than to him, knowing his impenetrability, "if one were treated as a woman!"

"As a woman?" Daniel inquired, puzzled.

"Yes, instead of as a cow."

"A cow?"

"Treated as a Southerner treats a woman."

"Now I should think," was Daniel's complacent reply, "that when a husband acts toward his wife as I saw your brother-in-law act toward your sister, like a butler or a porter, she wouldn't respect him."

"The mediæval peasant idea that if her husband doesn't beat her, he doesn't love her," said Margaret.

But the dreariness of mind Daniel's attitude caused her she, with a sort of mediæval superstition, almost welcomed as being at least some expiation for the sin of her loveless marriage.

Margaret was disappointed to find, as the days passed over her head, that because of her inability to ride on the cars without great physical distress, she was obliged to postpone the promised visit to her mother-in-law; and at last, when her appearance made the little trip no longer possible, she wrote to Mrs. Leitzel and explained the reason for her not keeping her promise.

"But just as soon as your grandchild is able to travel," she concluded her letter, "I shall bring it (not knowing its gender) out to see you."

It seemed to Margaret that, unaggressive though she was, the weeks before her confinement were constantly marked by contentions, apparently inevitable, between her and Daniel about the many things of life which they viewed from diametrically opposed standpoints. Her monthly account of her expenditures with her ten dollars allowance was one of these points of difference. The first time Daniel asked her to produce the little account book he had given her she took it from her desk, scribbled a few words in it, and cheerfully handed it to him, and he read on one page, "Daniel gave me ten dollars," and on the opposite page, "All spent. Balances exactly."

Daniel looked up from the book inquiringly.

"That's as much of an account as you'll ever get from me, Daniel, as to what I did with ten dollars in a whole month! Did you actually suppose I'd give you the items, like a little school-girl?"

And no amount of persuasion, or of fretting and fuming on his part, could induce her to submit to him an itemized account of her allowance.

Her South Carolina property was another bone of contention.

"I can't get a word from that brother-in-law of yours in reply to my letter to him!" Daniel complained one September evening when they were alone in their bedroom just after supper, Margaret, in a pink silk negligé, lying on a couch at the foot of the bed and Daniel seated in an armchair beside her. "The slipshod business ways of those Southerners! What does the man mean?"

"He's such a procrastinator! I must admit Walter's rather lazy. Clever, though. He's considered a mighty intelligent lawyer."

"A clever lawyer has some sense of business, which he does not seem to have!"

"Don't you be so sure of that!"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing."

"Well, he does seem to have enough sense of business about him to defraud you out of what belongs to you!" snapped Daniel.

"Walter is an honourable gentleman," Margaret quietly affirmed, "with a sense of honour, Daniel, that to you would be as incomprehensible as a Sanscrit manuscript, or a page of Henry James."

"The quixotic 'sense of honour' of a South Carolinian!" scoffed Daniel. "Oh, I know all about that. Impracticable moonshine! Nothing in it, Margaret. Has no market value."

"No, thank God, it has no market value."

"You're a little simpleton, my dear, about 'values' of any kind, and I wish you wouldn't swear!"

"Can't one thank God except in church and at the vulgar hour of feeding?"

"Be reverent!" Daniel, looking shocked, reproved her. "And I don't see where his sense of honour comes in in his behaviour as to your property!"

"Don't bother about my property, Daniel," Margaret wearily advised. "It's not worth bothering about."

"It's all you have, though," Daniel ruefully retorted.

Margaret offered no reply to this.

"I want you to write to Walter, Margaret, and see whether you can get an answer out of him."

"What about?"

"What about? Haven't I just been telling you? You write and demand of him why I receive no answer from him to my repeated inquiries as to your property."

"But I have told you all there is to know about it, Daniel."

"Margaret," Daniel patiently answered, "I have already explained to you how I can make that estate yield you a handsome income."

"By depriving my sister of a home? No, thank you."

"Naturally your sister would also profit by what I would do for the estate."

"Profit at your expense? Not if you could help it, Daniel."

Daniel laughed appreciatively at this flattering tribute to his business acumen.

"I think I see, Daniel, how you would manage the 'deal.' You'd improve the estate, rent it at a high figure, and keep the rent (at least my share, if not my sister's) to pay you for what you had spent."

"Pretty good, my dear! You have some business cleverness yourself, I see, after all! Sufficient, at any rate, to recognize that you ought to be getting your share of your uncle's bequest. Just inform your brother-in-law, in your letter, that you are going to sign over to me the power of attorney to manage your affairs. That will bring him to time and fetch an answer!"

"But I'm not."

"Not what?"

"Not going to sign away any 'power' I may have. I didn't know I had any. It's a pleasant surprise. I shall certainly hold on to it. I need it, whatever it is."

"Without power of attorney to act for you, Margaret, I can't help you. You'll have to give it to me," said Daniel firmly. "I'll bring up a paper from the office on Monday and Jennie and Sadie will witness your signature. Can't you get up and write to Walter now? I'll dictate the letter."

"I wouldn't rise from this comfortable couch, Daniel, if the house were on fire."

"It's very bad, very bad indeed, I'm sure, for you to lie about so much."

"If you were carrying a weight of several tons, I guess you wouldn't be on your feet when you didn't have to."

"'Several tons?' That's a gross exaggeration, Margaret."

"I never was strong on figures or statistics," Margaret admitted.

"Won't you try to get up and write the letter? I very much wish you to," urged Daniel, still quite unable to credit the fact which in these days frequently confronted him, that any feminine member of his household could fail to jump at his least bidding.

"What do you want me to write?" Margaret parried.

"Great heavens!" Daniel cried, exasperated. "I've told you only about a dozen times!"

"A dozen? A gross exaggeration, I'm sure. And to call upon the heavens is irreverent. There, there, I won't tease you," she patted his hand; and he immediately clasped and held it, for he still adored her. "But as I've told you, Daniel, that I won't sign over to you the power of attorney, there's nothing to write to Walter about."

"Is this your idea of not 'teasing' me? I've said that without the power of attorney, I can't help you."

"I don't want that kind of help, my dear, thank you very much."

"Will you write the letter before I go to the office to-morrow morning?"

"Telling Walter I'm not signing over to you the power of attorney? Is that necessary?"

"Very well, Margaret." Daniel rose with dignity and turned away from her. "I'll dictate to my stenographer what I wish you to say to Walter and I'll bring the letter up from the office for your signature."

"Daniel!" Margaret suddenly exclaimed at mention of his stenographer.

He turned about and looked at her.

"Did you give Catherine the note I sent her this morning?"

"I certainly did not."

"Why not?"

"You ask me to play the messenger boy to my own clerk! I read your silly note, my dear, and burned it."

Margaret, sinking a bit lower among the cushions of the couch, did not trust herself to answer.

"Now, my dear," said Daniel, "since you can no longer go out, you can take advantage of the chance that fact gives you, to drop this unseemly intimacy, which no doubt by this time you find burdensome enough, especially as you have seen how exceedingly annoying it is to my sisters and to me. We are willing to overlook your having flouted our wishes if you'll now——"

"Has Miss Hamilton been to see me and been turned away?" demanded Margaret, who for the past two weeks had neither seen nor heard a word from her friend, her notes and telephone calls having both failed to bring any response. She had been deeply wounded and worried at Catherine's seeming unfaithfulness to her in her time of dire need; and she had suffered keenly from the deadly loneliness that had engulfed her; for she had, through almost daily association for many weeks, become so deeply bound to Catherine that she felt she could never again know happiness if she lost her. While she had indeed suspected that some treachery on the part of the Leitzels was keeping Catherine away, yet she did not understand how her friend could possibly have failed to receive at least some of the communications she had sent to her; letters which she would have supposed must bring Catherine to her side, if she had to storm the house to get there.

"Have your sisters sent my friend away when she came to see me and kept it from me that she was here?" Margaret repeated in a tone so quiet that Daniel never suspected the volcano it covered.

"She has been told by Jennie every time she called that you wished to be excused. This unseemly intimacy is to cease! You will have to understand, Margaret, that I am not a man to be trifled with by a mere woman—a mere girl, I might say!"

"Brave and manly of you, Daniel, certainly."

"If you don't watch out, you will be the cause of my losing the most valuable clerk in New Munich and one to whom I have confided important private business matters, for, if I must, I shall tell her straight that I object to her running after my wife!"

"Oh!"

"I have already hinted to her that you are at last coming to your senses and getting over your silly infatuation for her. I intimated to her that it was only your appreciation of her valuable services to me which had led you to be very nice and friendly to her."

"Do you suppose for an instant, Daniel, that she was idiot enough to believe that?"

"Why shouldn't she believe it?"

"Because she knows me—and she also knows you."

But though Margaret assured herself many times in the course of the wakeful, restless night which followed that Catherine would not believe Daniel's absurd story nor let the family attitude toward her come between them, she really suffered an agony of doubt and fear lest the friendship so precious to her should not be able to stand under the pressure brought to bear upon it.

"Surely Catherine will think I am asking too much of her, to expect her to stick to me through all this! But oh! I can't give her up, I can't! I will not let them separate us!"

The next morning, as soon as Daniel had left the house for his office, she hurried to the telephone and called up Miss Hamilton, knowing that her only chance of getting Catherine was when Daniel was not in his office. She actually trembled with apprehension for fear she should be told that Miss Hamilton had not yet reached the office. But to her joy it was Catherine's own voice that answered her.

"Oh, Catherine! It's Margaret! Catherine, listen! I've been wanting you so! I didn't know why you didn't come, and I only learned last night. Catherine, I'm coming right down to the office, now, in a taxicab, and I want you to come out with me for an hour, for I must see you to straighten things out. Tell the powers that be that you've a headache or small-pox symptoms or something and just come. Will you?"

"I will, dear. I'll leave a note on my desk and walk out now, and meet you at the door when you get here."

"I'll be as quick as I can."

She hung up the receiver. But just as she was going to lift it again, to call the taxicab office, her eyes fell upon Jennie and Sadie congregated a few feet away from her, Sadie staring at her in consternation and Jennie in wrath and indignation.

"Margaret!" Jennie suddenly came to her and forcibly pushed her from the telephone. "You ain't to call a taxicab, so you ain't, Margaret! Our Danny ain't to be spited so when I'm close by!"

"Very well," answered Margaret coolly, "I'll go next door and use Mrs. Kaufman's telephone."

"But," gasped Sadie, "that'll make talk yet!"

Margaret, not replying, started for the door.

"Margaret!" cried Jennie sharply, hurrying after her and catching her arm, "how that'll look yet—you going into the neighbours' to 'phone! You darsent go round to our neighbours' making talk!" she commanded. "I won't leave you do it.'"