e bars against such persons. Society--"

"Rats!" ejaculated Mr. Pantin coarsely.

The hand which she had laid tenderly upon his shoulder was withdrawn as
if it harbored a hornet.

"I don't understand this at all--not at all," she said, icily.
"However," very distinctly, "it is not necessary that I should, for I
shall not do it." She folded her arms as she confronted him.

Mr. Pantin was silent so long that she thought the battle was over, and
purred at him:

"You can realize how I feel about it, can't you, darling?"

"No, by George, I can't! And I'm not going to either." He slapped the
table with Henry Van Dyke in ooze leather for emphasis. "I want Kate
Prentice invited here the next time she's in town. If you don't do as I
ask, Priscilla, you shan't go a step--not a step--to Keokuk this
winter."

"Is that an ultimatum?" Mrs. Pantin demanded.

Mr. Pantin gave a quick furtive look over either shoulder, then declared
with emphatic gusto:

"I mean every damn word of it!"

Mrs. Pantin stood speechless, thinking rapidly. There was nothing for it
evidently but to play her trump card, which never yet had failed her.
She wasted no breath in further argument, but threw herself full-length
on the davenport and had hysterics.

Only a few times in their married life had Mr. Pantin risen on his hind
legs, speaking figuratively, and defied her. In the beginning, before he
was well housebroken, he was careless in the matter of cleaning his
soles on the scraper, and had been obstinate on the question of changing
his shirt on Wednesdays, holding that once a week was enough for a
person not engaged in manual labor. Mrs. Pantin had won out on each
issue, but it had not been an easy victory. Mr. Pantin had been docile
so long now that she had expected no further trouble with him, therefore
this outbreak was so unlooked for that her fit was almost genuine.

Having hurled his thunderbolt, Mr. Pantin stood above his wife regarding
her imperturbably as she lay with her face buried in a sofa pillow.
Unmoved, he even felt a certain interest in the rise and fall of her
shoulder blades as she sobbed. Actually, she seemed to breathe with
them--"like the gills of a fish," he thought heartlessly--and wondered
how long she could keep it up.

"It's no use having this tantrum, Prissy," he said inexorably.

Tantrum! The final insult. Mrs. Pantin squealed with rage and gnawed the
corner of the leather pillow.

"You might as well come ou