ng disdainful amusement.

In fact, they were anything but jokes. On Mondays and Thursdays she
used to attend a class for women who, like herself, wished to be
"up-to-date on culture and all that sort of thing." They hired a
teacher to cram them with odds and ends about art and politics and the
"latest literature, heavy and light." On Tuesdays and Fridays she had
an "indigent gentlewoman," whatever that may be, come to her to teach
her how to converse and otherwise conduct herself according to the
"standards of polite society." Joe used to give imitations of those
conversation lessons that raised roars of laughter round the poker
table, the louder because so many of the other men had wives with the
same ambitions and the same methods of attaining them.

Mrs. Ball came back to the subject of Anita. "I am glad you are going
to settle with such a charming girl. She comes of such a charming
family. I have never happened to meet any of them. We are in the West
Side set, you know, while they move in the East Side set, and New York
is so large that one almost never meets anyone outside one's own set."
This smooth snobbishness, said in the affected "society" tone, was as
out of place in her as rouge and hair dye in a wholesome, honest old
grandmother.

I began to pace the floor. "Can it be," I fretted aloud, "that Joe's
racing round looking for an Episcopalian preacher, when there was a
Methodist at hand?"

"I'm sure he wouldn't bring anything but a Church of England priest,"
Mrs. Ball assured me, loftily. "Why, Miss Ellersly wouldn't think she
was married, if she hadn't a priest of her own church."

My temper got the bit in its teeth. I stopped before her, and fixed
her with an eye that must have had some fire in it. "I'm not marrying
a fool, Mrs. Ball," said I. "You mustn't judge her by her bringing
up--by her family. Children have a way of bringing themselves up, in
spite of damn fool parents."

She weakened so promptly that I was ashamed of myself. My only excuse
for getting out of patience with her is that I had seen her seldom in
the last few years, had forgotten how matter-of-surface her
affectation and snobbery were, and how little they interfered with her
being a good mother and a good wife, up to the limits of her brain
capacity.

"I'm sure, Mr. Blacklock," she said, plaintively, "I only wished to
say what was pleasant and nice about your fiancee. I know she's a
lovely girl. I've often admired her at the opera