g disdainful amusement.

In fact, they were anything but jokes. On Mondays and Thursdays she used
to attend a class for women who, like herself, wished to be "up-to-date on
culture and all that sort of thing." They hired a teacher to cram them with
odds and ends about art and politics and the "latest literature, heavy and
light." On Tuesdays and Fridays she had an "indigent gentlewoman," whatever
that may be, come to her to teach her how to converse and otherwise conduct
herself according to the "standards of polite society."

Joe used to give imitations of those conversation lessons that raised roars
of laughter round the poker table, the louder because so many of the other
men had wives with the same ambitions and the same methods of attaining
them.

Mrs. Ball came back to the subject of Anita.

"I am glad you are going to settle with such a charming girl. She comes of
such a charming family. I have never happened to meet any of them. We are
in the West Side set, you know, while they move in the East Side set, and
New York is so large that one almost never meets any one outside one's own
set." This smooth snobbishness, said in the affected "society" tone, was
as out of place in her as rouge and hair-dye in a wholesome, honest old
grandmother.

I began to pace the floor. "Can it be," I fretted aloud, "that Joe's racing
round looking for an Episcopalian preacher, when there was a Methodist at
hand?"

"I'm sure he wouldn't bring anything but a Church of England priest,"
Mrs. Ball assured me loftily. "Why, Miss Ellersly wouldn't think she was
married, if she hadn't a priest of her own church."

My temper got the bit in its teeth. I stopped before her, and fixed her
with an eye that must have had some fire in it. "I'm not marrying a fool,
Mrs. Ball," said I. "You mustn't judge her by her bringing-up--by her
family. Children have a way of bringing themselves up, in spite of damn
fool parents."

She weakened so promptly that I was ashamed of myself. My only apology for
getting out of patience with her is that I had seen her seldom in the last
few years, had forgotten how matter-of-surface her affectation and snobbery
were, and how little they interfered with her being a good mother and a
good wife, up to the limits of her brain capacity.

"I'm sure, Mr. Blacklock," she said plaintively, "I only wished to say what
was pleasant and nice about your fiancee. I know she's a lovely girl. I've
often admired her at the ope