She
said that Vida Sommers, the idol of thousands, had been "a mere daughter
of the people." Her eyes crinkled as she uttered this phrase. So I chose
a chair in the shadow while she built a second cigarette.

Ten years ago I'm taking a vacation down in New York City. Along comes a
letter from Aunt Esther Colborn, of Fredonia, who is a kind of a third
cousin of mine about twice removed. Says her niece, Vida, has had a good
city job as cashier of a dairy lunch in Boston, which is across the river
from some college, but has thrown this job to the winds to marry the only
college son of a rich New York magnate or Wall Street crook who has cast
the boy off for contracting this low alliance with a daughter of the
people. Aunt Esther is now afraid Vida isn't right happy and wants I
should look her up and find out. It didn't sound too good, but I obliged.

I go to the address in Sixty-seventh Street on the West Side and find
that Vida is keeping a boarding house. But I was ready to cheer Aunt
Esther with a telegram one second after she opened the door on me--in
a big blue apron and a dustcap on her hair. She was the happiest young
woman I ever did see--shining it out every which way. A very attractive
girl about twenty-five, with a slim figure and one of these faces that
ain't exactly of howling beauty in any one feature, but that sure get
you when they're sunned up with joy like this one was.

She was pleased to death when I told her my name, and of course I must
come in and stay for dinner so I could see all her boarders that was like
one big family and, above all, meet her darling husband Clyde when he got
home from business. The cheeriest thing she was, and I adore to meet
people that are cheery, so I said nothing would please me better. She
took me up to her little bedroom to lay my things off and then down to
the parlour where she said I must rest and excuse her because she still
had a few little things to supervise. She did have too. In the next hour
and a half she run up and down two flights of stairs at least ten times.
I could hear her sweeping overhead and jamming things round on the stove
when she raced down to the kitchen. Yes, she had several little things to
supervise and one girl to help her. I peeked into the kitchen once while
I was wandering through the lower rooms, and she seemed to be showing
this girl how to boil potatoes. I wondered if she never run down and if
her happy look was really chronic or mebbe