margaret's instinct for self-preservation, being rapidly educated along new lines since her marriage, closed her lips in the presence of jennie and sadie upon the great delight she found in her new acquaintance, her husband's secretary; for though the standards of value which the leitzels held as to most things in life had at first seemed to her incomprehensible, she was of late beginning to have a glimmering understanding of them. so, upon returning to the sitting-room after miss hamilton's call, she repressed any expression of her happiness, and not until she and daniel were alone in the automobile which he had hired this afternoon for her pleasure, and incidentally for his own, did she speak of it. she had not yet learned the necessity of hiding from him, also, almost everything that she felt and thought.
"this is a red letter day for me, daniel. i've found a friend! i've never had an intimate girl friend—oh! but i've yearned for one! of all the many people i've met since i came here, there hasn't been one except that miss mary aucker, who has since gone to boston for the winter, whose society i'd prefer to that of a book or solitude. i'm not naturally a very good 'mixer,' i'm afraid, but in ten minutes miss hamilton and i—well, we simply found each other, deep down where we both live! it's such a novel and wonderful experience to me!" she softly exclaimed, her eyes shining. "it's going to give me the greatest happiness i've ever known!"
"the greatest happiness you've ever known! why, margaret——"
"i mean that i've ever known with a woman," she said soothingly.
"but, my dear!" he exclaimed, "what can you be thinking of? you can't make a friend of my secretary!"
"if she is a lady?"
"but she isn't. they don't go anywhere, these hamiltons!"
"they are a cultured new england family, daniel, and if they don't go into society here, it is probably because they don't want to. i'm sure i can't imagine why they should want to. i don't mean, dear," she quickly added, not at all sincerely, "to cast any reflection upon your new munich society; i'm speaking of society in general. it is rather unsatisfactory, isn't it? i wouldn't give up the friendship i'm going to have with miss hamilton for all the rest of new munich society, i assure you."
"but you must give it up! why, my dear, the hamiltons are renters!"
"'renters?'"
"yes, renters!"
"what are 'renters?'"
"you know what i mean—they don't own the house they live in, they rent it."
"oh!" margaret fell back laughing against the seat of the car. "of course if i had known that, daniel, i shouldn't have found miss hamilton congenial, sympathetic, and companionable. oh, daniel!" she gasped with laughing.
but daniel's sense of humour was not developed.
"you must be on your guard more, my dear," he gravely warned her, "or you will be getting yourself involved most uncomfortably with troublesome people. do let jennie and sadie be your guides as to whom you should cultivate here and whom keep at a proper distance."
"jennie and sadie be my—select my friends for me?"
"instruct you as to those among whom you may select for yourself," he amended it. "they know new munich and you don't."
"and they," thought margaret wonderingly, "think themselves 'above' a cultured, sophisticated, well-bred girl like miss hamilton—they!"
"but, daniel," she asked, genuinely puzzled, "that nice little woman that called yesterday, that i liked so much, said her husband was a grocer. i confess it rather shocked me. but you all seemed to approve of her. in new munich is a grocer better than a teacher?"
"he's a wholesale grocer, which makes a vast difference, of course."
"does it? and was the drygoods person who was with her also wholesale?"
"mrs. frantz? no, but she's rich, very rich. they own their handsome home at the head of our block. listen, margaret! while you were in the parlour with miss hamilton, jennie and sadie helped me make up the list for our party, and even i myself could not have discriminated more astutely than they did (jennie especially) as to whom we ought to invite and whom we ought not. on monday i'll have one of my office clerks address the envelopes for the invitations on a typewriter."
"oh, my god, daniel! you can't send typewritten invitations!"
"for goodness' sake, margaret, cut out swearing! i'd be horribly mortified if any one heard you!"
margaret was silent.
daniel turned to glance at her uneasily, fearing he had offended her, but she was red with suppressed laughter and as she met his eye it broke forth in a little squeal.
"oh, daniel," she sighed, "swearing isn't as bad as slang, dear. i'd much rather hear you say 'damn it' than 'cut it out.'"
she looked so pretty in her sable furs, another inheritance from an ancestor, that, the automobile being covered, he seized her face in his two hands and held his lips to hers for a long minute.
"daniel," she said when he at last released her, "remind me to look over the list before you send the invitations. i may want to add some names."
"i don't think you will, dear. we drew up the list very carefully."
"i'll glance over it."
"but, margaret," he firmly insisted, "the list is complete as it stands. you can't add any name to it that would not be objectionable to my sisters and me."
"i understand that the party is to be a large general affair, not small and exclusive? in that case, you know, we shall have to invite every one who has called and sent us gifts."
"impossible! why, our butcher sent us a gilt-framed snow-scene! and sadie's dressmaker a souvenir spoon!"
"then at least we must invite every one who has called on me."
"by no means. wait until you have lived here long enough to have gotten your bearings and you'll see how right jennie and sadie and i are in drawing the line so carefully."
margaret wisely desisted from further discussion of the matter, though she felt troubled by her conviction that she would certainly not find on that list the names of the few women of the town who had really interested her and who were probably "renters" or self-supporting or something else which, by the leitzel standard, would class them with "dogs and sorcerers." but it was she and daniel who were giving the party, and even though jennie and sadie did keep house for them, she was of course the nominal mistress of her husband's home and responsible for the courtesy or discourtesy extended to their acquaintances; and she did not like the idea of being made to appear a petty snob in the eyes of the few people of new munich for whose opinion of her she cared. but what could she do about it?
"the people they seem to approve of have been the most vulgar who have called on me," she reflected. "and the few persons of breeding and education i've met here they have flouted. yet i recognize the delicacy of their position—jennie's and sadie's—living here in their brother's house and dependent upon him. i don't want to assert myself in a way to make them feel their dependence. what can i do?"
"another thing, margaret," said daniel in a tone of authority, "i want to ask you not to make yourself common with people beneath you."
"make myself 'common?'"
"why, you are as common with my secretary as you are with mrs. ocksreider or mrs. and miss miller!"
"i'm 'common?'"
"don't you think you are?"
"well, in charleston we weren't considered just to say common people, daniel, though perhaps we were over-estimated."
"good heavens, margaret, i don't mean that you yourself are common; i certainly wouldn't have married you if i had thought that. i mean you make yourself—well, too democratic. that's what i mean, too democratic."
"the prerogative of the well-born, daniel, who don't feel the necessity for snobbishness. have you fixed the date for the party?"
"yes, the twenty-second; three weeks from yesterday. i'll have the house decorated by a lancaster florist and i'll have a caterer from philadelphia." he repeated with relish his astonishing intention.
"but, daniel, are you sure we can afford all that?"
he laughed exultantly. "well, my dear, i've never given a large party and i'm going to impress the town! it will be the swellest thing that was ever given here! why shouldn't it be? i can afford it—that is," he pulled himself up, "i can afford it once in a while, and," he added with feeling, "i'm celebrating the happiest event of my whole life. you're worth all that it will cost, margaret!"
"thanks!"
"you're welcome, my dear."
"we must invite your step-mother to the party, daniel."
a slight start expressed daniel's disturbed surprise at this unexpected suggestion.
"she's too old and too—well, too unworldly."
he winced from the discovery that margaret must some time make, that his step-mother was a mennonite, talked pennsylvania dutch, was wholly uneducated and, in short, a disgrace to the leitzel family.
"we must send her a card, daniel, whether she comes or not."
"no, no; she might take a notion to come!"
"but that would be lovely! i am so fond of old ladies. why do you say 'no?'"
"i don't want her 'round!" he snapped fretfully. "don't send her an invitation! she lives only fifteen miles from here and i do believe she'd come if she were invited, she's so proud of being related to us! you see, margaret," he added, preparing the way a bit, "she's not exactly our equal, i'm sorry to tell you."
"then," thought margaret, "she's undoubtedly a very superior woman!"
"daniel!" she suddenly proposed, "if she lives only fifteen miles away, let's motor out to see her."
"we haven't time," said daniel shortly.
"some other time then? i'd like to meet her."
"perhaps."
"won't she be at hiram's to-morrow at the family party at millerstown?"
"no."
"why not?"
"because hiram won't invite her. we have very little to do with her, my dear, except to give her her home."
"you do that?" she wondered at the number of people he supported.
"well, she lives in our old home near our coal lands. we don't charge her any rent."
"i'm going out to see her some time, daniel. since you don't care to visit her, i'll take miss hamilton. i'd like to see your coal lands and your old home."
daniel looked apoplectic. "margaret!" he gasped. "listen to me! don't speak to any one of my step-mother! hardly any one knows we have one and we don't want them to know it."
"gracious! why not?"
"we're ashamed of her, margaret. she's not a lady, though i don't see why that should reflect on us, since she isn't a blood relation. and as to miss hamilton, haven't i made it clear to you that it would humiliate me unbearably to have my wife seen in company with my stenographer?"
"oh, but, daniel, my dear, because her family are 'renters?' there, there," she patted him, "don't worry about me. i'm twenty-five years old, you know, and am surely competent to choose my own friends. and it's better to be renters than rotters. let us go home, now, will you? it's getting late, and i'm cold—and hungry. jennie promised us buckwheat cakes for supper. tell me all about your brother hiram's family," she added when daniel had ordered the chauffeur to turn home. "how many children has he? i'll be so glad to get some children into my arms again—i'm so awfully homesick for hattie's babies!"
there was a little catch in her voice and daniel answered sympathetically: "i'd like to see hattie's babies again myself! they certainly are nice little children—the most aristocratic looking children, margaret, i ever saw. i hope," he lowered his voice, "that our children will be as aristocratic looking."
margaret closed her eyes for an instant as though to shut out some things she did not wish to see.
"how many children?" she repeated after a moment.
"four: zwingli, naomi, christian, and daniel. daniel, the baby, is my namesake of course. you see, hiram had about decided i wasn't going to marry and that having no children of my own, i'd do well by my namesake. but," daniel chuckled, "i fooled him, didn't i?"
"do you like his wife?"
"oh, yes, he did very well, very well indeed. lizzie's worth thirty thousand dollars."
he paused expectantly. here was margaret's chance to speak up and tell him what she was worth.
"if she's worth that much," was margaret's comment, "she certainly ought to be all wool and a yard wide. but i asked whether you liked her."
"why, yes, she's a good wife," returned daniel, disappointed, his tone dejected. why couldn't he make margaret talk property? "hiram married the richest woman in millerstown. and she's a very capable and economical woman, too. you'll hear my brother preach to-morrow," he added with pride, cheering up a bit. "he's a fine preacher. so considered in millerstown. if he had gone into the ministry younger, he'd have made his mark in his profession just as i have done in the law; but he was nearly thirty when he began to study. yes," said daniel as the car drew up at their door, "you'll hear a great sermon when you hear my brother hiram preach."
