elect a plant also, to
go to Mrs. Wheeler."

After all, why not the Wheeler girl? She had been carefully reared, if
the Wheeler house was rather awful in spots, and she was a gentle little
thing; very attractive, too, especially in church. And certainly Wallie
had been seeing a great deal of her.

She went to the greenhouses, and from there upstairs and into the rooms
that she had planned for Wallie and his bride, when the time came. She
was more content than she had been for a long time. She was a lonely
woman, isolated by her very grandeur from the neighborliness she craved;
when she wanted society she had to ask for it, by invitation. Standing
inside the door of the boudoir, her thoughts already at work on
draperies and furniture, she had a vague dream of new young life
stirring in the big house, of no more lonely evenings, of the bustle and
activity of a family again.

She wanted Wallie to settle down. She was tired of paying his bills at
his clubs and at various hotels, tired and weary of the days he lay in
bed all morning while his valet concocted various things to enable him
to pull himself together. He had been four years sowing his wild oats,
and now at twenty-five she felt he should be through with them.

The south room could be the nursery.

On Decoration Day, as usual, she did her dutiful best by the community,
sent flowers to the cemetery and even stood through a chilly hour there
while services were read and taps sounded over the graves of those who
had died in three wars. She felt very grateful that Wallie had come back
safely, and that if only now he would marry and settle down all would be
well.

The service left her emotionally untouched. She was one of those women
who saw in war, politics, even religion, only their reaction on
herself and her affairs. She had taken the German deluge as a personal
affliction. And she stood only stoically enduring while the village
soprano sang "The Star Spangled Banner." By the end of the service she
had decided that Elizabeth Wheeler was the answer to her problem.

Rather under pressure, Wallie lunched with her at the country club, but
she found him evasive and not particularly happy.

"You're twenty-five, you know," she said, toward the end of a
discussion. "By thirty you'll be too set in your habits, too hard to
please."

"I'm not going to marry for the sake of getting married, mother."

"Of course not. But you have a good bit of money. You'll have much