her life. Lloyd had
a nervous breakdown a few months ago--we all knew it was nothing but
money worry--but yesterday his wife said to me in all good faith that
he was too unselfish, he was wearing himself out. She was trying to
persuade him to put Mabel in school and go abroad for a good rest."

Mrs. Burgoyne laughed.

"That's like Jeanette Carew showing me her birthday present," Barry
went on with a grin. "It seems that George gave her a complete set of
bureau ivory--two or three dozen pieces in all, I guess. When I asked
her she admitted that she had silver, but she said she wanted ivory,
everybody has ivory now. Present!" he repeated with scorn, "why, she
just told George what she wanted, and went down and charged it to him!
She's worried to death about bills now, but she started right in
talking motor-cars; and they'll have one yet. I'd give a good deal," he
finished disgustedly, "to know what they get out of it."

"I don't believe they're as bad as all that," said the lady. "There
used to be some lovely people here, and there was a whist club too, and
it was very nice. They played for a silver fork and spoon every
fortnight, and I remember that Mrs. Holly had nearly a dozen of the
forks. There was a darling Mrs. Apostleman, and Mrs. Pratt with two shy
pretty daughters--"

"Mrs. Apostleman's still here," he told her. "She's a fine old lady.
When a woman gets to be sixty, it doesn't seem to matter if she wastes
time. Mrs. Pratt is dead, and Lizzie is married and lives in San
Francisco, but Anne's still here. She and her brother live in that
vault of a gray house; you can see the chimneys. Anne's another," his
tone was cynical again, "a shy, nervous woman, always getting new
dresses, and always on club reception committees, with white gloves and
a ribbon in her hair, frightened to death for fear she's not doing the
correct thing. They've just had a frieze of English tapestries put in
the drawing-room and hall,--English TAPESTRIES!"

"Perhaps you don't appreciate tapestries," said Mrs. Burgoyne, with her
twinkling smile. "You know there is a popular theory that such things
keep money in circulation."

"You know there's hardly any form of foolishness or vice of which you
can't say that," he reminded her soberly; and Mrs. Burgoyne, serious in
turn, answered quickly:

"Yes, you're quite right. It's too bad; we American women seem somehow
to have let go of everything real, in the last few generations. But
things ar