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 _any_thing?"
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."