had funds to buy some city clothes with; but he never had funds enough
to go along.

That was one of mother's grievances. Pop bored her to death at home and
she wanted to scream every time he mentioned his business--it was so
selfish of him to talk of that at night when she had so much to tell him
of the misbehavior of the servants. But, greatly as he annoyed her round
the house, she cherished an illusion that she would like him in a hotel.

She had tried to get him to read a certain novel--a wonderful book
mercilessly exposing the curse of modern America; which is the men's
habit of sticking to their business so closely that they give their poor
wives no companionship. They leave their poor wives to languish at home
or to go shopping or gossiping, while they indulge themselves in the
luxuries of vibration between creditor and debtor.

In this novel, and in several others she could have named, the poor
wife naturally fell a prey to the fascinations of a handsome devil with
dark eyes, a motor or two, and no office hours.

_Mere_ often wondered why she herself had not taken up with some
handsome devil fully equipped for the entertainment of neglected wives.

If she had not been a member of that stanch American womanhood to which
the glory of the country and its progress are really due, she might have
startled her husband into realizing too late, as the too-late husbands
in the novels realized, that a man's business is a side issue and that
the perpetuation of romance is the main task. Her self-respect was all
that held _Mere_ to the home; that and--whisper!--the fact that no
handsome devil with any kind of eyes ever tried to lure her away.

When she reproached Pop and threatened him he refused to be scared. He
paid his wife that most odious of tributes--a monotonous trust in her
loyalty and an insulting immunity to jealousy. Almost worse was his
monotonous loyalty to her and his failure to give her jealousy any
excuse.

They quarreled incessantly, but the wrangles were not gorgeously
dramatic charges of intrigue with handsome men or painted women,
followed by rapturous make-ups. They were quarrels over expenditures,
extravagances, and voyages.

_Mere_ charged Pop with parsimony and he charged her with recklessness.
She accused him of trying to tie them down to a village; he accused her
of trying to drive him to bankruptcy. She demanded to know whether he
wanted his children to be like children of their neighbors--