Jackson was natural at last.

"Not at all," replied Mrs. Symes with hauteur. "She must work, so why
not for me? She's strong and very, very capable."

"Oh, she's capable all right, but," persisted Mrs. Jackson unconvinced,
"it strikes me funny. Say, is Essie Tisdale a servant, too?"

Mrs. Symes smiled ever so slightly as she fumbled with her visiting card
and laid it in a more conspicuous place.

"Certainly."

"Was that why she wasn't ast to the banquet?"

Again Mrs. Symes smiled the slow, deprecating smile which she was
assiduously cultivating.

"Society must draw the line somewhere, Mrs. Jackson."

Mrs. Jackson gulped with a clicking sound, and at the door shook hands
with Mrs. Symes, wearing the dazed expression of one who has bumped his
head on a shelf corner. Through the potted geranium she watched Mrs.
Symes picking her way across another vacant lot to the dwelling of the
Sylvanus Starr's.

Mrs. Abe Tutts with her blue flannel yachting cap set at an aggressive
angle over one eye paddled across the street and was upon Mrs. Jackson
before that person was aware of her presence.

"Has that guttersnipe gone?" A quite superfluous question, as Mrs.
Jackson was well aware.

"Of who are you speakin'?" inquired Mrs. Jackson coldly.

"Who would I be speakin' of but Gus Kunkel?" demanded Mrs. Tutts
belligerently.

"Look here, Mis' Tutts, I don't want to have no words with you, but----"

"What's that?" interrupted Mrs. Tutts eyeing the visiting card which
Mrs. Jackson had been studying intently. "Is she leavin' tickets for
somethin'?"

"Oh, no," replied. Mrs. Jackson in a blase tone, "this is merely her
callin' card."

"Callin' card! You was to home, wasn't you?"

"It's the new style to leave your callin' card whether they're to home
or not," explained Mrs. Jackson, hazarding a guess.

Mrs. Jackson's air of familiarity with social mysteries was most
exasperating to Mrs. Tutts.

"What's the sense of that? Lemme see it."

Mrs. Tutts read laboriously and with unmitigated scorn:

MRS. ANDREW PHIDIAS SYMES
At Home
Thursday 2-4

She sank cautiously into the blue rocking-chair and removed a hatpin
which skewered her yachting cap to a knob of hair.

"That beats _me_! 'Mrs. Andrew Phidias Symes!'" Mrs. Tutts saw no reason
to slight the letter p and pronounced it distinctly. "At home Thursdays
between two and four! What of it? Ain't we all generally home Thursdays
between two and