"Only the tea-kettle playing at being a geyser. When we get rich I'm
going to have a gas range. They say it's the only way to cook and cook
and be a lady still."

"That brings us back to cooking--" began her father.

"Not at all, daddy. The subject is dismissed forever. I'm going to have
that Ethiop who does chores for us clean up the photograph gallery. I'll
be down after while, to see how it looks."

She bade him good-bye at the front door, and went whistling about the
further business of the morning. The sky was blue and the air warmed as
the sun climbed into the heavens. Phil felt that she had conveyed to her
father a sense of their imperative needs without wounding him. She was
resolved to help him if she could. Her pride had been pricked by her
Uncle Amzi's proffered aid, which she had carefully avoided mentioning
to her father. She knew that it would have hurt him, and she had
reasoned, much in the fashion of Nan Bartlett, that her father owed it
to himself to exercise his unquestioned gifts to reestablish himself in
his profession. As he left her and walked toward the street, she was
aware that he strode away more quickly than was his wont.

Phil's morning was not eventless. The telephone jingled three times, as
three aunts demanded to know why she had parted with the
maid-of-all-work they had installed in the Kirkwood kitchen. Aunt Josie
was censorious and Aunt Fanny mildly remonstrative; Aunt Kate sought
light as to the reason for the cook's early passing, as she was anxious
to try her herself. Phil disposed of these calls with entire good humor.
Then a senior, between lectures at the college, asked her if she would
go driving with him Sunday afternoon. The senior, in the security of his
fraternity house, prolonged the conversation. As this was Thursday and
there was never any imperative need in Montgomery for making engagements
so far ahead, the senior was exercising unjustifiable precaution. Phil
declined the invitation. Her aunts had repeatedly warned her against
college boys. A daughter of the house of Montgomery was not to waste
herself upon students, a lawless body of whom no one knew anything in
particular save that they seized every opportunity to murder sleep for
reputable citizens.

Phil employed the telephone to order of the grocer and butcher, made
beds, swept rooms, and sat down with a new magazine, dropped at the door
by the postman, to run her eyes over the pictures. One or two things she