illion--and there's fighting in it, too."

"All right, go and take Luke. But I don't think the movies are as good
for him as working in a garden."

"You never want me to have pleasure. Home all day with only memories
of the dead for company, and then you come in as cross as a witch,
ready to stick your nose in a book or go dig in the mud! Excuse me,
Trudy, but a body has to speak out sometimes. Your father to the
life--reading and grubbing with plants. Oh, mother's proud of you,
Mary, but if you would only get yourself up a little smarter and go
out with young people you'd soon enough want Luke to go out, too! I
don't pretend to know what your judgment toward your poor old mother
would be!"

Mary's day had included a dispute with a firm's London representative,
the Constantine incident, a session at the dentist's as a noon-recess
attraction, housecleaning the office, and two mutually contradictory
wires from Steve. She laid her knife and fork down with a defiant
little clatter.

"I can't burn the candle at both ends. I work all day and I have to
relax when I leave the office. If my form of a good time is to read or
set out primroses it is nothing to cry thief for, is it? I want you to
go out, mother, as you very well know. And you are welcome to fill the
house with company. Only if I'm to do a man's work and earn his wage I
must claim my spare time for myself."

"Now listen here, dear," interposed Trudy, who took Mary's part when
it came to a real argument, "don't get peeved. Let me buy your next
dress and show you how to dance. You'll be surprised what a difference
it will make. You'll get so you just hate ever to think of work."

"Splendid! Who will pay the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker?"
Mary thought of the wedding presents carelessly stacked about
Beatrice's apartment. One pile of them, as she measured expenses,
would have paid the aforementioned gentlemen for a year or more.

"Now you've got her going," Luke objected. "Say, Trudy, you don't kill
yourself tearing off any work at the shop!"

"Luke," began his mother, "be a gentleman. Dear me, I wish I hadn't
said a word. To think of my children in business! Why, Luke ought to
be attending a private school and going to little cotillion parties
like my brothers did; and Mary in her own home." She pressed her
napkin to her eyes.

"I admit Mary carries me along on the pay roll--I'm Mary's foolishness,"
Trudy said, easily. "Mary's a good scout even if s