ressed every man as
Mister in his own house, just as "Mrs. B." always called him "Mister
Ball," and he called her "Missus Ball" before "company." "Come right
into the front parlor. Billy, turn on the electric lights."

Anita had been standing with her head down. She now looked round with
shame and terror in those expressive blue-gray eyes of hers; her
delicate nostrils were quivering. I hastened to introduce Ball to her.
Her impulse to fly passed; her training in doing the conventional
thing asserted itself. She lowered her head again, murmured an
inaudible acknowledgment of Joe's greeting.

"Your wife is at home?" said I. If one was at home in the evening, the
other always was also, and both were always there, unless they were at
some theater--except on Sunday night, when they dined at Sherry's,
because many fashionable people did it. They had no friends and few
acquaintances. In their humbler and happy days they had had many
friends, but had lost them when they moved away from Brooklyn and went
to live, like uneasy, out-of-place visitors, in their grand house,
pretending to be what they longed to be, longing to be what they
pretended to be, and as discontented as they deserved.

"Oh, yes, Mrs. B.'s at home," Joe answered. "I guess she and Alva
were--about to go to bed." Alva was their one child. She had been
christened Malvina, after Joe's mother; but when the Balls "blossomed
out" they renamed her Alva, which they somehow had got the impression
was "smarter."

At Joe's blundering confession that the females of the family were in
no condition to receive, Anita said to me in a low voice: "Let us go."

I pretended not to hear. "Rout 'em out," said I to Joe. "And then take
my electric and bring the nearest parson. There's going to be a
wedding--right here." And I looked round the long salon, with
everything draped for the summer departure. Joe whisked the cover off
one chair, his man off another. "I'll have the women folks down in two
minutes," he cried. Then to the man: "Get a move on you, Billy. Stir
'em up in the kitchen. Do the best you can about supper--and put a lot
of champagne on the ice. That's the main thing at a wedding."

Anita had seated herself listlessly in one of the uncovered chairs.
The wrap slipped back from her shoulders and--how proud I was of her!
Joe gazed, took advantage of her not looking up to slap me on the back
and to jerk his head in enthusiastic approval. Then he, too,
disappeared.