travel sooner or later; visit boarding-school friends one winter;
California, Bermuda or Europe the next; eagerly patronize winter
resorts; and fill in various spaces acting as bridesmaids. When they
have the chance they take part in pageants and amateur theatricals,
periodically devote themselves to some fashionable charity or other,
read novels, and attend current event courses if very desperate.

I used to think when I was fifteen that I should like to be an author,
more specifically, a poet. I used to write verses that were often read
out loud in my English course at the Hilton High School. And I designed
book plates, too, and modeled a little in clay. The more important
business of establishing ourselves socially interrupted all that sort of
thing, however. But I often wish I might have specialized in some line
of art. Perhaps now when I have so much time on my hands it would prove
my staunchest friend. For a girl who has no established income it might
result in an enjoyable means of support.

I have an established income, you see. Father kindly left me a little
stock in some mines out West, stock or bonds--I'm not very clear on
business terms. Anyhow I have an income of about eight hundred dollars a
year, paid over to me by my brother Tom, who has my affairs in charge.
It isn't sufficient for me to live on at present, of course. What with
the traveling, clothes--one thing and another--Edith has had to help out
with generous Christmas and birthday gifts. This she does lavishly.
She's enormously rich herself, and very generous. My last Christmas
present from her was a set of furs and a luxurious coon-skin motor coat.
Perhaps I wouldn't feel quite so hopeless if my father and mother were
living, and I felt that my idleness in some way was making them happy.
But I haven't such an excuse. I am not necessary to the happiness of any
household. I am what is known as a fifth wheel--a useless piece of
paraphernalia carried along as necessary impedimenta on other people's
journeys.

There are lots of fifth wheels in the world. Some are old and rusty
and out of repair, and down in their inmost hubs they long to roll off
into the gutter and lie there quiet and undisturbed. These are the old
people--silver-haired, self-effacing--who go upstairs to bed early
when guests are invited for dinner. Some are emergency fifth wheels,
such as are carried on automobiles, always ready to take their place
on the road, if one of the regul