for her?'

The attainments of Mrs. Emery both as to wealth and social position,
however, were not reached by her daughter Marietta and her husband,
but in the determination to make it appear as if they were, Marietta
thus exposes her own life of worry in a talk with her father:

'Keeping up a two-maid and a man establishment on a one-maid
income, and mostly not being able to hire the one maid. There
aren't _any_ girls to be had lately. It means that I have to
be the other maid and the man all of the time, and all three,
part of the time.' She was starting down the step, but paused
as though she could not resist the relief that came from
expression. 'And the cost of living--the necessities are bad
enough, but the other things--the things you have to have not
to be out of everything! I lie awake nights. I think of it
in church. I can't think of anything else but the way
the expenses mount up. Everybody getting so reckless and
extravagant and I _won't_ go in debt! I'll come to it, though.
Everybody else does. We're the only people that haven't
oriental rugs now. Why, the Gilberts--and everybody knows how
much they still owe Dr. Melton for Ellen's appendicitis,
and their grocer told Ralph they owe him several hundred
dollars--well, they have just got an oriental rug that they
paid a hundred and sixty dollars for. Mrs. Gilbert said they
'just _had_ to have it, and you can always have what you have
to have.' It makes me sick! Our parlor looks so common! And
the last dinner party we gave cost--'

Another phase of the _squirrel cage worry_ is expressed in this terse
paragraph:

'Father keeps talking about getting one of those
player-pianos, but Mother says they are so new you can't tell
what they are going to be. She says they may get to be too
common.'

Bye and bye it comes Lydia's turn to decide what place she and her new
husband are to take in Endbury society, and here is what one frank,
sensible man says about it:

'It may be all right for Marietta Mortimer to kill herself
body and soul by inches to keep what bores her to death to
have--a social position in Endbury's two-for-a-cent society,
but, for the Lord's sake, why do they make such a howling
and yelling just at the tree when Lydia's got the tragically
important question to decide as to whether that's what _she_
wants? It's like exp