y
weren't trying to go each other one better all the time; when one gets
a thing the others have all got to have it, or have something nicer.
Take the Browns, now, your neighbors there--"

"In the shingled house, with the babies swinging on the gate as we came
by?"

"Yes, that's it. They've got four little boys. Doctor Brown is a king;
everybody worships him, and she's a sweet little woman; but of course
she's got to strain and struggle like the rest of them. There's a Mrs.
Willard White in this town--that big gray-shingled place down there is
their garage--and she runs the whole place. She's always letting the
others know that hobbles are out, and everything's got to hang from the
shoulder--"

"Very good!" laughed Mrs. Burgoyne, "you've got that very nearly right."

"Willard White's a nice fellow," Barry went on, "except that he's a
little cracked about his Packard. They give motoring parties, and of
course they stop at hotels way up the country for lunch, and the women
have got to have veils and special hats and coats, and so on. Wayne
Adams told me it stood him in about thirty dollars every time he went
out with the Whites. Wayne's got his own car now; his wife kept at him
day and night to get it. But he can't run it, so it's in the garage
half the time."

"That's the worst of motoring," said the lady with a thoughtful nod,
"the people who sell them think they've answered you when they say,
'But you don't run it economically. If you understood it, it wouldn't
cost you half so much!' And the alternative is, 'Get a man at
seventy-five dollars a month and save repairing and replacing bills.'
Nice for business, Barry, but very much overdone for pleasure, I think.
I myself hate those days spent with five people you hardly know," she
went on, "rushing over beautiful roads that you hardly see, eating too
much in strange hotels, and paying too much for it. I sha'n't have a
car. But tell me more about the people. Who are the Adamses? Didn't you
say Adams?"

"Wayne Adams; nice people, with two nice boys," he supplied; "but she's
like the rest. Wayne lies awake nights worrying about bills, and she
gives silver photograph-frames for bridge prizes. That white stucco
house where they're putting in an Italian garden, is the Parker Lloyds.
Mrs. Lloyd's a clever woman, and pretty too; but she doesn't seem to
have any sense. They've got a little girl, and she'll tell you that
Mabel never wore a stitch that wasn't hand-made in