our food. We'll be invited out,
too, and when we eat at home I can get a meal in a few minutes and
I'll make Gay wash the dishes. Besides, I have a wonderful recipe for
vanishing cream that his sister bought in Paris, and I'm going to have
a little business myself, making it to supply to a few select
customers as a favour. I'll sell small jars for a dollar and large
ones for three, and I can make liquid face powder, too. Oh, we won't
starve. And if you could wait for the money I know I owe you----"

"Call it a wedding present," Mary said, briefly.

"You lamb!"

Trudy fell on her neck and was in the throes of explaining how
grateful she was and how she had an evening dress modelled after one
of Gay's sister's, which cost seven hundred dollars before the war,
when Gay appeared--very debonair and optimistic in his checked suit,
velours hat, and toothpick-toed tan shoes, and his pale little eyes
were quite animated as he kissed Trudy and dutifully shook hands with
Mary, explaining that the Hunters of Arcadia had just offered him a
clerical position at the club, ordering supplies and making out bills
and so on--because he was married, very likely. It would pay forty a
month and his lunches.

"And only take up your mornings! You can slip extra sandwiches in your
pockets for me, deary. I'll give you a rubber-pocketed vest for a
Christmas present," Trudy exclaimed. "Oh, say everything in front of
Mary--she knows what we really are!"

At which Mary fled, with the general after impression of pale, wicked
eyes and a checked suit and a dashing, red-haired young matron with a
can opener always on hand, and the fact that the Vondeplosshes were
going to lay siege to the O'Valleys as soon as possible.

Mary decided that it was a great privilege to be a profane lady
concealing a heartache compared to other alternatives. At least
heartaches were quite real.

CHAPTER VII

It was almost Christmas week before the realization of Trudy's
ambition to have Beatrice call upon her as the wife of Gaylord
Vondeplosshe instead of an unimportant employee of her own husband.
Trudy counted upon Beatrice to help her far more than Gaylord dared to
hope.

"Bea is like all her sort," he warned Trudy when the point of
Beatrice's having to invite the Vondeplosshes for dinner was close at
hand; "she is crazy about herself and her money. She would cheat for
ten cents and then turn right round and buy a thousand-dollar dress
without questi