then banged his fist and laughed rollingly. He seemed surprised when
Father merely flushed and tightened his tie. For all his gross body, Mr.
Hartwig was sensitive--so sensitive that he was hurt when people didn't
see the humor of his little sallies.

The Hartwigs' modest residence was the last word in cement and small
useless side-tables and all modern inconveniences. The furnace heat made
you sneeze, and the chairs, which were large and tufted, creaked. In the
dining-room was an electrolier made of seven kinds of inimical colored
glass, and a plate-rack from which were hung department-store steins. On
the parlor table was a kodak album with views of Harry in every stage of
absurdity. There was a small car which Mr. Hartwig drove himself. And
there was a bright, easy, incredibly dull social life; neighbors who
went out to the country club to watch the tennis in summer, and played
"five hundred" every Saturday evening in the winter.

Like a vast proportion of the inhabitants of that lonely city, New York,
the Applebys were unused to society. It is hard to tell which afflicted
them more--sitting all day in their immaculate plastered and varnished
room with nothing useful to do or being dragged into the midst of
chattering neighbors who treated them respectfully, as though they were
old.

Mother begged daughter to be permitted to dust or make beds; Father
suggested that he might rake the lawn. But Lulu waggled her stringy
forefinger at them and bubbled, "No, no! What would the neighbors think?
Don't you suppose that we can afford to have you dear old people take a
rest? Why, Harris would be awfully angry if he saw you out puttering
around, Father. No, you just sit and have a good rest."

And then, when they had composed to a spurious sort of rest the hands
that were aching for activity, the Applebys would be dragged out, taken
to teas, shown off, with their well-set-up backs and handsome heads, as
Lulu's aristocratic parents.

"My father has been a prominent business man in New York for many years,
you know," she would confide to neighbors.

While the prominent business man longed to be sitting on a foolish stool
trying shoes on a fussy old lady.

But what could he do? In actual cash Mother and he had less than seven
dollars in the world.

By the end of two weeks Father and Mother were slowly going mad with the
quiet of their room, and Lulu was getting a little tired of her
experiment in having a visible parenta