s, and
Hannah did not attempt to conceal her incredulity. As a matter of fact,
Lise sometimes did insist on a "party."

"I want you should bring her back by ten o'clock. That's late enough for
a girl who works to be out. It's late enough for any girl."

"Sure, Mis' Bumpus," Wiley would respond easily.

Hannah chafed because she had no power to enforce this, because Mr. Wiley
and Lise understood she had no power. Lise went to put on her hat; if she
skimped her toilet in the morning, she made up for it in the evening when
she came home from the store, and was often late for supper. In the
meantime, while Lise was in the bedroom adding these last touches, Edward
would contemptibly continue the conversation, fingering the Evening
Banner as it lay in his lap, while Mr. Wiley helped himself boldly to
another doughnut, taking--as Janet observed--elaborate precautions to
spill none of the crumbs on a brown suit, supposed to be the last
creation in male attire. Behind a plate glass window in Faber Street,
belonging to a firm of "custom" tailors whose stores had invaded every
important city in the country, and who made clothes for "college" men,
only the week before Mr. Wiley had seen this same suit artistically
folded, combined with a coloured shirt, brown socks, and tie and
"torture" collar--lures for the discriminating. Owing to certain expenses
connected with Lise, he had been unable to acquire the shirt and the tie,
but he had bought the suit in the hope and belief that she would find him
irresistible therein. It pleased him, too, to be taken for a "college"
man, and on beholding in the mirror his broadened shoulders and
diminished waist he was quite convinced his money had not been spent in
vain; that strange young ladies--to whom, despite his infatuation for the
younger Miss Bumpus, he was not wholly indifferent--would mistake him for
an undergraduate of Harvard,--an imposition concerning which he had no
scruples. But Lise, though shaken, had not capitulated.....

When she returned to the dining-room, arrayed in her own finery, demure,
triumphant, and had carried off Mr. Whey there would ensue an interval of
silence broken only by the clattering together of the dishes Hannah
snatched up.

"I guess he's the kind of son-in-law would suit you," she threw over her
shoulder once to Edward.

"Why?" he inquired, letting down his newspaper nervously.

"Well, you seem to favour him, to make things as pleasant for him as you