Katherine and I think just alike about Mrs. Reagan. I
know, for I heard them talking one night just before the ball.

"But why in the name of Heaven should I go if I don't want to?" said
Miss Katherine, and she put her feet on the fender and lay back in her
big rose-covered chair. "I don't like her, or her family, the English
she speaks, or the books she reads. Why, then, should I go to her
parties? I'm not going!"

"Oh yes, you are." And Miss Webb put some more coal on the fire and made
it blaze. "Knowledge of life requires a knowledge of humanity In all its
subdivisions. Mrs. Reagan is a new sub. As a curio, she's worth the
price. You couldn't keep me from her show."

"But she's such a snob. When a woman does not know her grandfather's
first name on her mother's side and talks of people not being in her
set, Christian charity does not require you to visit her. I agree with
Mrs. Rodman. People like that ought to be let alone."

"But Mrs. Rodman isn't going to let them alone. Not for a minute. The
only thing that goes on among them that she doesn't know is what she
can't find out. She met me this morning, and asked me if I'd heard how
many people had gotten here, and when I said no, she made me come in
Miss Patty's store, and told me all she'd been able to discover.

"'There are eighteen guests already,' she said, 'and nearly all have
rooms to themselves. They tell me it's the fashion now for husbands and
wives not to see each other until breakfast, and not then if the wife
wants hers in bed.' And the way she lifted her chin and eyebrows would
be dangerous for you to try.

"'I tell you it's a reflection on Yorkburg's mode of life,' she went on.
'For two hundred years people have come and gone in this town, and
rooms have never been mentioned. But this is a degenerate age.
Degenerate! Scandalous wealth shouldn't be recognized, and I don't
intend to countenance it myself!'

"But she will." And Miss Webb took up her muff to go. "She bought a pair
of cream-colored kid gloves from Miss Patty, and she's going to wear
them at that ball. You couldn't keep her away."

And she was there. The first one, they say. She had on the dress her
Grandmother wore when her great-grandfather was minister to something in
Europe; and when she sailed around the rooms with the big, high comb in
her hair that was her great-great-grandmother's, Miss Webb says she was
the best side-show on the grounds.

But if you were to take a gimlet an