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Title: Undertow

Author: Kathleen Norris

Release Date: January, 2004  [EBook #4916]
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[This file was first posted on March 26, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS


UNDERTOW


VOLUME VII






To

MARGARET THOMAS

We need no gifts, whose thoughts and prayers maintain
Through all the years a strong and stronger chain,
Yet take the little gift, the visible sign
Of the deep love between your heart and mine.





UNDERTOW



Chapter One


The marriage of Albert Bradley and Anne Polk Barrett was as close
as anything comes, in these prosaic days, to a high adventure.
Nancy's Uncle Thomas, a quiet, gentle old Southerner who wore tan
linen suits when he came to New York, which was not often, and
Bert's mother, a tiny Boston woman who had lived in a diminutive
Brookline apartment since her three sons had struck out into the
world for themselves, respectively assured the young persons that
they were taking a grave chance. However different their viewpoint
of life, old Mrs. Bradley and old Mr. Polk could agree heartily in
that.

Of course there was much to commend the union. Nancy was
beautiful, she came of gentlefolk, and she liked to assert that
she was practical, she "had been a workin' woman for yeahs." This
statement had reference to a comfortable and informal position she
held with a private association for the relief of the poor. Nancy
was paid fifteen dollars a week, seven of which she in turn paid
to the pretty young widow, an old family friend only a few years
older than herself, with whom she boarded. Mrs. Terhune was rich,
in a modest way, and frequently refused the money entirely. But
she took it often enough to make the blooming Nancy feel quite
self-supporting, and as Nancy duly reported at the sunshiny office
of the Southern Ladies' Helping Hand every morning, or almost
every morning, the girl had some reason to feel that she had
solved her financial and domestic problem.

Bert was handsome, too, and his mother knew everybody who was any
body in Boston. If Nancy's grandfather Polk had been Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court of Maryland, why, Bert was the seventh of his
name in direct descent, and it was in Bert's great-great-
grandfather's home that several prominent citizens of Boston had
assumed feathers and warpaint for a celebrated tea-party a great
many years ago.

More than that, Bert was at a sensible age for matrimony, twenty-
five, and Nancy, like all southern girls, had ripened early, and
at twenty-two had several years of dancing and flirting behind
her. There was nothing impulsive about the affair. The two had
trotted about their adopted city for perhaps two years before Bert
brought Nancy the enormous diamond that his mother had given him
years ago for just this wonderful time. Circumstances had helped
them to know each other well. Nancy knew the sort of play that
made Bert stutter with enthusiasm as they walked home, and Bert
knew that Nancy made adorable little faces when she tried on hats,
and that her salary was fifteen dollars a week. At this time, and
for some years later, Bert was only one of several renting agents
employed by the firm of Pearsall and Pearsall, City Real Estate.
He moved his office from one new office-building downtown to
another, sometimes warmed by clanking new radiators, sometimes
carrying a gasoline stove with him into the region of new plaster
and paint. His name was not important enough to be included in the
list of tenants in the vestibule, he was merely "Renting Office,
Tenth Floor." And Nancy knew that when he had been a few months
longer with Pearsall and Pearsall, they would pay him exactly
thirteen hundred dollars a year.

That was the objection, money. Mother and Uncle Tom thought that
that was not enough; Nancy and Bert worked it all out on paper,
and thought it more than sufficient. They always had a splendid
balance, on paper. Meanwhile, Mrs. Terhune went on refusing
Nancy's board now and then, and slipping bank-notes into Nancy's
purse now and then, and Bert continued to board with the southern
gentlewomen to whom he had paid ten dollars a week for three
years. He felt like a son in the Venables' house, by this time.

It was at the Venables' boarding-house, indeed, that he first had
met the dark-eyed and vivacious Nancy, who was intimate with the
faded daughters of the family, Miss Augusta and Miss Sally Anne.
When Nancy's Uncle Thomas came to the city for one of his
infrequent visits, she always placed him in Mrs. Venable's care.

Bert's first impression of her was of a supernaturally clever
person, hopelessly surrounded by "beaux." She had so many admirers
that even Miss Augusta, who had had a disappointment, warmed into
half-forgotten coquetries while she amused Bert, for whom Miss
Nancy had no time. They seemed to Bert, whose youth had known
responsibility and hardship, a marvellously happy and light-
hearted crowd. They laughed continuously, and they extracted from
the chameleon city pleasures that were wonderfully innocent and
fresh. It was as if these young exiles had brought from their
southern homes something of leisure, something of spaciousness and
pure sweetness that the more sophisticated youth of the city
lacked. Their very speech, softly slurred and lazy, held a charm
for Bert, used to his mother's and his aunts' crisp consonants. He
called Nancy "my little southern girl" in his heart, from the hour
he met her, and long afterward he told her that he had loved her
all that time.

He could not free the cramped muscles of his spirit to meet her
quite on her own ground; it was his fate sometimes to reach the
laugh just as all the others grew suddenly serious, and as often
he took their airy interest heavily, and chained them with facts,
from which they fluttered like a flight of butterflies. But he had
his own claim, and it warmed the very fibres of his lonely heart
when he saw that Nancy was beginning to recognize that claim.

When they all went out to the theatre and supper, it was his
pocket-book that never failed them. And what a night that was
when, eagerly proffering the fresh bills to Lee Porter, who was
giving the party, he looked up to catch a look of protest, and
shame, and gratitude, in Nancy's lovely eyes!

"No, now, Lee, you shall not take it!" she laughed richly. Bert
thought for a second that this was more than mere persiflage, for
the expression on the girl's face was new. Later he reminded
himself that they all used curious forms of speech. "I just was
too tired to get up this morning," a girl who had actually gotten
up would say, or someone would comment upon a late train: "The old
train actually never did get here!"

After a while he took Nancy to lunch once or twice, and one day
took her to the Plaza, where his mother happened to be staying
with Cousin Mary Winthrop and Cousin Anna Baldwin, and his mother
said that Nancy was a sweet, lovely girl. Bert had quite a thrill
when he saw the familiar, beautiful face turned seriously and with
pretty concern toward his mother, and he liked Nancy's composure
among the rather formal older women. She managed her tea and her
gloves and her attentions prettily, thought Bert. When he took her
home at six o'clock he was conscious that he had passed an
invisible barrier in their relationship; she knew his mother. They
were of one breed.

But that night, when he went back to the hotel to dine, his mother
drew him aside.

"Not serious, dear--between you and Miss Barrett, I mean?"

Bert laughed in pleasant confusion.

"Well, I--of course I admire her awfully. Everyone does. But I
don't know that I'd have a chance with her." Suddenly and unbidden
there leaped into his heart the glorious thought of possessing
Nancy. Nancy--his wife, making a home and a life for unworthy him!
He flushed deeply. His mother caught the abashed murmur,
"...thirteen hundred a year!"

"Exactly!" she said incisively, almost triumphantly. But her eyes,
closely watching his expression, were anxious. "I don't believe in
having things made too easy for young persons," she added,
smiling. "But that--that really is too hard."

"Yep. That's too hard," Bert agreed.

"It isn't fair to the girl to ask it," added his mother gently.

"That's true," Bert said a little heavily, after a pause. "It
isn't fair--to Nancy."

The next night Nancy wondered why his manner was so changed, and
why he spoke so bitterly of his work, and what was the matter with
him anyway. She reflected that perhaps he was sorry his mother's
visit was over. For two or three weeks he seemed restless and
discontented, and equally unwilling to be included in the "Dutch
treats," or to be left out of them. And then suddenly the bad mood
passed, and Bert was his kind and appreciative and generous self
again. Clark Belknap, also of Maryland, who had plenty of money
and a charming personality and manner as well, began to show the
familiar symptoms toward Nancy, and Bert told himself that Clark
would be an admirable match for her. Also his Cousin Mary wrote
him that his second cousin Dorothy Hayes Hamilton was going to be
in New York for a few weeks, and asked him to take her about a
little, and see that she had a nice time. Cousin Mary, as was
usual, enclosed a generous check to insure the nice time, and
little Dorothy proved to be a very rose of a girl, just as
unspoiled as if her fortune had been half a dollar instead of half
a million and full of pride in her big cousin, whose Harvard
record she evidently knew by heart.

Bert willingly took her about, and they became good friends. He
did not see much of Nancy now, and one of the times he did see her
was unfortunate. He and Dorothy had been having tea at a roof-
garden, after a long delightful day in Dorothy's car, and now he
was to take her to her hotel. Just as he was holding the little
pongee wrap, and Dorothy was laughing up at him from under the
roses on her hat, he saw Nancy, going out between two older women.
His look just missed hers; he knew she had seen him; had perhaps
been watching him, but he could not catch her eye again.

It was a hot night, and Nancy looked a little pale and, although
as trim and neat as usual, a little shabby. Her pretty hands in
old gloves she had washed herself, her pretty eyes patiently fixed
upon the faces of the women who were boring her in her youth and
freshness with the business of sickness and poverty, her whole
gentle, rather weary aspect, smote Bert's heart with a pain that
was half a fierce joy. Never had he loved her in her gaiety and
her indifference as he loved her now, when she looked so sweetly,
so almost sorrowfully.

A week later he went to see her.

"Well, Mister Bert Bradley," she smiled at him, unfastening the
string from the great box of roses that had simultaneously arrived
from some other admirer, "I didn't know what to make of you! And
who was the more-than-pretty little girl that you were squiring on
the Waldorf roof last week?"

"Just my cousin, Dorothy Hamilton. She went back to Boston to-day.
She's finished school, and had a year abroad, and now she isn't
quite sure what she wants to do. How's Mr. Belknap?"

She narrowed her eyes at him mischievously.

"Don't you think you're smart! These are from him. He's very well.
He took me to the theatre last night, and we had a wonderful time.
Come with me into the kitchen, while I put these in water."

"Take good care of them!" Bert said witheringly. But she only
laughed at him from the sink. He followed her into the small, hot,
neat kitchen, with the clean empty pint bottle and the quarter-
pint bottle turned upside down near the bright faucets, and the
enamel handles of the gas stove all turned out in an even row.
Bert remembered that the last time he had been here was a cold May
morning, when he and Nancy had made countless hot cakes. He had
met her at church, and walked home with her, and while they were
luxuriously finishing the last of the hot cakes the others had
burst in, with the usual harum-scarum plans for the day. But that
was May, and now it was July, and somehow the bloom seemed to be
gone from their relationship.

They talked pleasantly, and after awhile Mrs. Terhune came in and
talked, too. She was distressed about some shares she held in a
traction company and Bert was able to be of real service to her,
taking a careful memorandum, and promising to see her about it in
a day. "For I expect we'll see you round here in a day or two,"
she said with simple archness. She was well used to the demands of
Nancy's beaux. Nancy looked particularly innocent and expectant at
this, "Perhaps Mr. Bradley might come in and cheer you up, if I go
off with Mrs. Featherstone for the week-end?" she suggested
pleasantly. Mrs. Featherstone had been Virginia Belknap.

Bert presently bade her a cold good-bye. His reassurance to Mrs.
Terhune was made the next day by telephone, and life became dark
and dull to him. Certain things hurt him strangely--the sight of
places where she had taken off the shabby gloves; and had seated
herself happily opposite him for luncheon or tea; the sound of
music she had hummed. He wanted to see her--not feverishly,
nothing extreme, except that he wanted it every second of the
time. A mild current of wanting to see Nancy underran all his
days; he could control it, he decided, and to an extent he did. He
ate and worked and even slept in spite of it. But it was always
there, and it tired him, and made him feel old and sad.

And then they met; Bert idling through the September sweetness and
softness and goldness of the park, Nancy briskly taking her
business-like way from West Eightieth to East Seventy-second
Street. What Nancy experienced in the next hour Bert could only
guess, he knew that she was glad to see him, and that for some
reason she was entirely off guard. For himself, he was like a
thirsty animal that reaches trees, and shade, and the wide
dimpling surface of clear waters. He had so often imagined meeting
her, and had so longed to meet her, that he was actually a little
confused, and wanted shakily to laugh, and to cling to her.

He walked to Seventy-second Street, with her and then to tea at a
tiny place in Madison Avenue called the Prince Royal. And she
settled herself opposite him, just as in his dreams--only so much
more sweetly--and smiled at him from her dear faithful blue eyes,
as she laid aside her gloves.

She was wearing a large diamond, surrounded by topazes. Bert knew
that he had never seen this ring before, although it did not look
like a new one. However, the age of the ring signified nothing. He
wondered if Clark Belknap's mother had ever worn it, and if Clark
had just given it to Nancy...

She was full of heavenly interest and friendliness. But when they
were walking home she told him that she was so sorry--she couldn't
ask him to dine, because she was going out. She asked him for the
next day, but his board of directors was having a monthly meeting
that night, and he had to be there. How about Saturday?

Saturday she was going out of town, a special meeting of the Red
Cross. They hung there. Nancy was perhaps ashamed to go on through
the list of days, Bert would not ungenerously force her. He left
her, thrilled and yet dissatisfied. He looked back almost with
envy to his state of a few hours earlier, when he had been hoping
that he might meet her.




Chapter Two


The week dragged by. The undercurrent of longing to see Nancy
flowed on and on. Bert wanted nothing else--just Nancy. He had
been spending the summer with a friend, at the friend's uptown
house, but now he thought he would go out to the Venables, and
show some interest in his newly-papered room and hear them speak
of her.

He rang their bell with a thumping heart. It was four o'clock in
the afternoon. She might even be here! Or they might tell him she
was engaged to Clark Belknap of Maryland. ... Bert felt so sick at
the thought that it seemed a fact. He wanted to run away.

Miss Augusta, red-eyed, opened the door. Beyond her he was somehow
vaguely aware of darkness, and weeping, and the subdued rustling
of gowns. Po' Nancy Barrett was here--he knew that? Well, didn't
he know that the dea' old Colonel had passed away suddenly--Miss
Augusta's tears flowed afresh. Nancy had come in unexpectedly to
lunch, and the telegram from her aunt had come while she was
there. "Tell Nancy Brother Edward passed on at five o'clock. Come
home at once."

Bert listened dazedly, in the shabby old parlour with the scrolled
flowery carpet, and the statues, and the square piano. He
comforted Miss Augusta, he even put one arm about her. Was there
something he could do?--he asked the forlorn, empty question
merely as a matter of course.

"I don't suppose yo' could send some telegrams..." Miss Augusta
said, blowing her nose damply. "Po' child, she hasn't got a
brother, nor anyone to depend on now in the hour of her bitteh
need!"

Bert's heart leaped.

"Just tell me!" he begged. "And what about trains, and
arrangements? Will she go down? And clothes?--would she need
something--"

This last item had been attended. Mama and Sis' Sally Anne had
gone down town, po' child, she didn't want much. And yes, she was
going down, to-morrow--that night, if it could be managed.

"But Nancy herself had better see yo'," Miss Augusta said
disappearing. Bert waited, his heart thundering. Murmuring and
tears came from some remote region. Then quietly and slowly Nancy,
in new black, came in. And Bert knew that to the end of the world,
as long as he should breathe, life would mean Nancy's life to him;
and the world was only Nancy.

They sat down on the slippery horsehair, and talked softly and
quickly. Ticket--train--telegrams--the little money that was
necessary--he advised her about them all. He called her "Nancy"
to-day, for the first time. He remembered afterward that she had
called him nothing. She went to get Mrs. Venable, after a while,
and later Sis' Sally Anne drew him aside and told him to make
Nancy drink her good hot tea. She drank it, at his command. Clark
Belknap came that evening; others came--all too late. Before the
first of them, Bert had taken her to the train, had made her as
comfortable as he could, had sat beside her, with her soft gloved
hand tight in his, murmuring to her that she had so much to be
thankful for--no pain, no illness, no real age. But she had left
him, she said, her lip trembling and her eyes brimming again. He
reminded her of her pretty, dependent step-mother, of the two
little half-brothers who were just waiting for Nancy to come and
straighten everything out.

"Yes--I've got to keep up for them!" she said, smiling bravely.
And in a tense undertone she added, "You're wonderful to me!"

"And will you have some supper--just to break the evening?"

"I had tea." She leaned back, and shut her eyes. "I couldn't--
eat!" she whispered pitifully. His response was to put his clean,
folded handkerchief into her hand, and at that she opened the wet
eyes, and smiled at him shakily.

"Just some soup--or a salad," he urged. "Will you promise me,
Nancy?"

"I promise you I'll try," she said in parting.

Walking home with his head in a whirl, Bert said to himself: "This
is the second of October. I'll give her six months. On the second
of April I'll ask her."

However, he asked her on Christmas night, after the Venables'
wonderful Christmas dinner, when they all talked of the Civil War
as if it were yesterday, and when old laces, old jet and coral
jewelry, and frail old silk gowns were much in evidence. They were
sitting about the coal fire in the back drawing-room, when Nancy
and Bert chanced to be alone. Mrs. Venables had gone to brew some
punch, with Sis' Sally Anne's help. The other young men of the
party were assisting them, Augusta had gone to the telephone.

Bert always remembered the hour. The room was warm, fragrant of
spicy evergreen. There was a Rogers group on the marble mantle,
and two Dresden china candlesticks that reflected themselves in
the watery dimness of the mirror above. Nancy, slender and
exquisite, was in unrelieved, lacy black; her hair was as softly
black as her gown. Her white hands were locked in her lap.
Something had reminded her of old Christmases, and she had told
Bert of running in to her mother's room, early in the chilly
morning, to shout "Christmas Gift!"

Not moving his sympathetic eyes from her Checking Page back In,
Please Wait ... to town again, and his own pleasure in their visit
was talking of Nancy; how wise, how sweet, how infinitely
desirable she was. Dorothy had wanted Cousin Albert to come to her
for Thanksgiving. No, a thousand thanks--but Miss Barrett was so
much alone now. He must be near her. Dorothy kept her thoughts on
the subject to herself, but he so far impressed his mother that
her own hopes came to be his, she dreaded the thought of what
might happen to her boy if that southern girl did not chance to
care for him.

But the southern girl cared. She locked the lace-clad arms about
his neck, on this memorable Christmas night and laid her cheek
against his. "Are you sure you want me, Bert?" she whispered.

They had not much altered their positions when Mrs. Venables came
back half an hour later, and a general time of kissing, crying and
laughing began.




Chapter Three


It was a happy time, untroubled by the thought of money that was
soon to be so important. Bert's various aunts and cousins sent him
checks, and Nancy's stepmother sent her all her own mother's linen
and silver, and odd pieces of mahogany on which the freight
charges were frightful, and laces and an oil portrait or two. The
trousseau was helped from all sides, every week had its miracle;
and the hats, and the embroidered whiteness, and the smart street
suit and the adorable kitchen ginghams accumulated as if by magic.
Bert's mother sent delightfully monogrammed bed and table-linen,
almost weekly. Nancy said it was preposterous for poor people to
start in with such priceless possessions!

Among the happy necessities of the time was the finding of a
proper apartment. Nancy and Bert spent delightful Saturdays and
Sundays wandering in quest of it; beginning half-seriously in
February, when it seemed far too early to consider this detail,
and continuing with augmented earnestness through the three
succeeding months. Eventually they got both tired and discouraged,
and felt dashed in the very opening of their new life, but finally
the place was found, and they loved it instantly, and leased it
without delay. It was in a new apartment house, in East Eleventh
Street, four shiny and tiny rooms, on a fourth floor. Everything
was almost too compact and convenient, Nancy thought; the ice box,
gas stove, dumb-waiter, hanging light over the dining table,
clothes line, and garbage chute, were already in place. It left an
ambitious housekeeper small margin for original arrangement, but
of course it did save money and time. The building was of pretty
cream brick, clean and fresh, the street wide, and lined with
dignified old brownstone houses, and the location perfect. She
smothered a dream of wide old-fashioned rooms, quaintly furnished
in chintzes and white paint. They had found no such enchanting
places, except at exorbitant rents. Seventy-five dollars, or one
hundred dollars, were asked for the simplest of them, and the
plumbing facilities, and often the janitor service, were of the
poorest. So Nancy abandoned the dream, and enthusiastically
accepted the East Eleventh Street substitute, Bert becoming a
tenant in the "George Eliot," at a rental of thirty-five dollars a
month. Some of the old Barrett furniture was too large for the
place, but what she could use Nancy arranged with exquisite taste:
fairly dancing with pleasure over the sitting room, where her
chair and Bert's were in place, and the little droplight lighted
on the little table. In this room they were going to read Dickens
out loud, on winter nights.

They were married on a hot April morning, a morning whose every
second seemed to Nancy flooded with strange perfumes, and lighted
with unearthly light. The sky was cloudless; the park bowered in
fresh green; the streets, under new shadows, clean-swept and warm.
Her gown was perfection, her new wide hat the most becoming she
had ever worn; the girls, in their new gowns and hats, seemed so
near and dear to her to-day. She was hardly conscious of Bert, but
she remembered liking his big brother, who kissed her in so
brotherly a fashion. Winter was over, the snow was gone at last,
the trying and depressing rains and the cold were gone, too, and
she and Bert were man and wife, and off to Boston for their
honeymoon.




Chapter Four


They had been married eleven days, and were loitering over a
Sunday luncheon in their tiny home, when they first seriously
discussed finances; not theoretical finances, but finances as
bounded on one side by Bert's worn, brown leather pocket-book, and
on the other by his bank-book, with its confusing entries in black
and red ink.

Here on the table were seventeen dollars and eighty cents. Nancy
had flattened the bills, and arranged the silver in piles, as they
talked. This was Sunday; Bert would be paid on Saturday next.
Could Nancy manage on that?

Nancy felt a vague alarm. But she had been a wage earner herself.
She rose to the situation at once.

"Manage what, Bert? If you mean just meals, of course I can! But I
won't have this much every week for meals ...?"

Bert took out a fountain pen, and reached for a blank envelope.

"Do you mind working it out?--I think it's such fun!"

"I love it!" Nancy brought her brightest face to the problem. "Now
let's see--what have we? Exactly one hundred a month."

"Thirteen hundred a year," he corrected.

"Yes, but let's not count that extra hundred, Bee!" Nancy, like
all women, had given her new husband a new name. "Let's save that
and have it to blow in, all in a heap, for something special?"

"All right." Bert digressed long enough to catch the white hand
and kiss it, and say: "Isn't it wonderful--our sitting here
planning things together? Aren't we going to have FUN!"

"Rent, thirty-five," Nancy began, after an interlude. Bert, who
had secured a large sheet of clean paper, made a neat entry,
"Rent, $35."

"You make such nice, firm figures, mine are always wavy!" observed
Nancy irrelevantly, at this. This led nowhere.

"Now one quarter of that rent ought to come out every week," Bert
submitted presently. "Eight dollars and a half must be put aside
every week."

"Out of this, too?" Nancy asked, touching the money on the table.

"Well, that's all that's left of half my salary, drawn in
advance," Bert said, pondering. "Yes, you see--we pay a month in
advance on the first!"

"And what have we besides this, Bee? Your Aunt Mary's check, and--
and what else?"

"Aunt Mary's hundred, which will certainly take care of the
freight bills," Bert calculated, "and that's all, except this."

"But, Bert--but, Bert--all that money we had in Boston?"

Bert pointed to the table.

"You behold the remainder."

"Weren't we the extravagant wretches!" mused Nancy. "Taxis--tea-
parties--breakfast upstairs--silly pink silk stockings for Nancy,
a silly pongee vest for Bert--"

"But oh, what a grand time!" her husband finished unrepentantly.

"Wasn't it!" Nancy agreed dreamily. But immediately she was
businesslike again. "However, the lean years have set in," she
announced. "I'll have to count on a dollar a week laundry--laundry
and rent nine dollars and a half; piano and telephone at the rate
of three dollars a month--that's a dollar and a half more; milk, a
quart of milk and half a pint of cream a day, a dollar and
seventy-five cents more; what does that leave, Bert?"

"It leaves twelve dollars and twenty-five cents," said Bert.

"But what about your lunches, dearest?"

"Gosh! I forgot them," Bert stated frankly. "I'll keep 'em under
fifteen cents a day," he added, "call it a dollar a week!"

"You can't!" protested Nancy, with a look of despair.

"I can if I've got to. Besides, we'll be off places, Sundays, and
I'll come home for lunch Saturday, and you'll feed me up."

"But, Bert," she began again presently, "I'll have to get ice, and
car fares, and drugs, and soap, and thread, and butter, and bread,
and meat, and salad-oil, and everything else in the world out of
that eleven-fifty!" Bert was frowning hard.

"You can't have the whole eleven-fifty," he told her reluctantly,
"I can walk one way, to Forty-Eighth Street, but I can't walk
both. I'll have to have some car fare. And my office suit has got
to be pressed about once every two weeks--"

"And newspapers!" added Nancy, dolefully. "Seven cents more!" And
they both burst into laughter. "But, Bee," she said presently,
ruffling his hair, as she sat on the arm of his chair, "really I
do not know what we will do in case of dentist's bills, or
illness, or when our clothes wear out. What do people do? Is
thirty-five too much rent, or what?"

"I'm darned if I know what they do!" Bert mused.




Chapter Five


They both were destined to learn how it was managed, and being
young and healthy and in love, they learned easily, and with much
laughter and delight. Bert's share was perhaps the easier, for
although he manfully walked to his office, polished his own shoes,
and ate a tiresome and unsatisfying lunch five days a week, he had
his reward on the sixth and seventh days, when Nancy petted and
praised him.

Her part was harder. She never knew what it was to be free from
financial concern. She fretted and contrived until the misspending
of five cents seemed a genuine calamity to her, She walked to
cheap markets, and endured the casual scorn of cheap clerks. She
ironed Bert's ties and pressed his trousers, saving car fares by
walking, saving hospitality by letting her old friends see how
busy and absorbed she was, saving food by her native skill and
ingenuity.

But they lived royally, every meal was a triumph, every hour
strangely bright. Of cooking meat, especially the more choice
cuts, Nancy did little this year, but there was no appetizing
combination of vegetables, soups, salads, hot breads, and iced
drinks that she did not try. Bert said, and he meant it, that he
had never lived so well in his life, and certainly the walls of
the little apartment in the "George Eliot" were packed with joy.
When their microscopic accounts balanced at the end of the week,
they celebrated with a table-d'hete dinner down town--dinners from
which they walked home gloriously happy, Nancy wondering over and
over again HOW the restaurateurs could manage it, Bert, over his
cigar, estimating carefully: "Well, Sweet, there wasn't much cost
to that soup, delicious as it was, and I suppose they buy that
sole down at the docks, in the early morning..."

When Nancy had learned that she could live without a telephone,
and had cut down the milk bill, and limited Bert to one butter
ball per meal, she found she could manage easily. In August they
gave two or three dinners, and Nancy displayed her pretty table
furnishings to "the girls," and gave them the secret of her iced
tea. She told her husband that they got along because he was "so
wonderful"; she felt that no financial tangle could resist Bert's
neatly pencilled little calculations, but Bert praised only her--
what credit to him that he did not complain, when he was the most
fortunate man in the world?

They came to be proud of their achievement. Nancy had Buckley
Pearsall, Bert's chief, and his wife, to dinner, and kindly Mrs.
Pearsall could not enough praise the bride and her management.
Later the Pearsalls asked the young Bradleys down to their Staten
Island home for a week-end. "And think of the pure gain of not
buying a thing for three days!" exulted Nancy, thereby convulsing
her lord. She brought back late corn, two jars of Mrs. Pearsall's
preserved peaches, a great box of grapes to be made into jelly,
and a basket of tomatoes. Bert said that she was a grafter, but he
knew as well as she that Nancy's pleasure in taking the gifts had
given Mrs. Pearsall a genuine joy.

With none of the emergencies they had dreaded, and with many and
unexpected pleasures, the first winter went by. Sometimes Bert got
a theatre pass, sometimes old friends or kinspeople came to town,
and Bert and Nancy went to one of the big hotels to dinner, and
stared radiantly about at the bright lights, and listened to music
again, and were whirled home in a taxicab.

"That party cost your Cousin Edith about twenty-five dollars,"
Nancy, rolling up her hair-net thoughtfully, would say late at
night, with a suppressed yawn. "The dinner check was fourteen, and
the tickets eight--it cost her more than twenty-five dollars!
Doesn't that seem wicked, Bert? And all that delicious chicken
that we hardly touched--dear me, what fun I could have with
twenty-five dollars! There are so many things I'd like to buy that
I never do; just silly things, you know--nice soaps and powders,
and fancy cheeses and an alligator pear, and the kind of toilet
water you love so--don't you remember you bought it in Boston when
we honeymooned?"

Perhaps a shadow would touch Bert's watching face, and he would
come to put an arm about her and her loosened cloud of hair.

"Poor old girl, it isn't much fun for you! Do you get tired of it,
Nancy?"

"Bert," she said, one night in a mood of gravity and confidence
that he loved, and had learned to watch for, "I never get tired.
And sometimes I feel sure that the most wonderful happiness that
ever is felt in this world comes to two people who love each
other, and who have to make sacrifices for each other! I mean
that. I mean that I don't think riches, or travel, or great gifts
and achievements bring a greater happiness than ours. I think a
king, dying," smiled Nancy, trying not to be too serious, "might
wish that, for a while at least, he had been able to wear shabby
shoes for the woman he loved, and had had years of poking about a
great city with her, and talking and laughing and experimenting
and working over their problem together!"

Bert kissed the thoughtful eyes, but did not speak.

"But just the same," Nancy presently went on, "sometimes I do get-
-just a little frightened. I feel as if perhaps we had been a
little too brave. When your cousins, and mine, ask us how we do
it, and make so much of it, it makes me feel a little uneasy.
Suppose we really aren't able to swing it ...?"

Bert knew how to meet this mood, and he never failed her. He put
his arm about her, tonight, and gave her his sunniest smile.

"We could pay less rent, dear."

This fired Nancy. Of course they could. She had seen really
possible places, in inaccessible neighbourhoods, which rented far
more reasonably. She had seen quite sunny and clean flats for as
little as fourteen and sixteen dollars a month. Her housekeeping
abilities awakened to the demand. What did she and Bert care about
neighbourhoods and the casual dictates of fashion? They were a
world in themselves, and they needed no other company.

"Everyone said that we'd never get this far," Bert reminded her
hearteningly. She was immediately reassured, and fell to
enthusiastic planning for Christmas.




Chapter Six


It was their first Christmas, and they spent it alone together.
Bert and Nancy knew that they would not spend another Christmas
alone, and the shadowy hope for April lent a new tone even to
their gayety, and deepened the exquisite happiness of the dark,
snowbound day. The tiny house was full of laughter, for Bert had
given his wife all the little things she had from time to time
whimsically desired. The fancy cheeses, and the perfumes and
soaps, made her laugh and laugh as she unwrapped them. There were
fuzzy wash-cloths--a particular fancy of hers--and new library
paste and new hair-pins, and a can-opener that made her exclaim:
"Bert, that was cute of you!" and even an alligator pear. A
bewildered look came into Nancy's eyes as she went on
investigating her bulging stocking--gloves, and silk hosiery, and
new little enamelled pins for her collars, and the piano score of
the opera she so loved--where had the money come from?

"My firm gave us each ten," Bert explained, grinning.

"And you spent it ALL on me!" Nancy said, stricken. "You poked
about and got me every blessed thing I ever wanted in this world--
you darling!"

"Why not?" he asked. "You're the only thing I have, Nance! And
such LITTLE things, dear."

"It isn't the things--it's your thinking of them," Nancy said.
"And eating wretched lunches while you planned them! You make me
cry--and meanwhile, my beloved little chicken will roast himself
dry!"

She rushed into her kitchen. Bert rushed after her; his days at
home were a succession of interruptions for Nancy, no topic was
too insignificant for their earnest discussion, and no pleasure
too small to share. To-day the chief object of their interest was
his mother's Christmas present to him, a check for fifty dollars,
"for my boy's winter coat."

They looked at the slip of paper at regular intervals. To Bert it
brought a pleasant thought of the thin, veiny hand that had penned
it, the little silk-clad form and trimly netted gray hair. He
remembered his mother's tiny sitting room, full of begonias and
winter sunshine and photographs of the family, with a feeling that
while mother could never again know rapturous happiness like his
own, yet it was good to think of her as content and comfortable,
with her tissue-wrapped presents from the three daughters-in-law
lying on her table.

But to Nancy the check meant the future only: it meant her
handsome Bert dressed at last in suitable fashion, in a "big,
fuzzy, hairy coat." She pointed out various men's coats in the
windows they passed that afternoon, and on the other young men who
were walking with wives and babies.

But Bert had his own ideas. When Nancy met him down town a day or
two later, to go pick the coat, she found him quite unmanageable.
He said that there was no hurry about the coat--they were right
here in the housekeeping things, why not look at fireless cookers?
In the end they bought an ice-cream freezer, and a fireless
cooker, and two pairs of arctic overshoes, and an enormous oval-
shaped basket upon which the blushing Nancy dropped a
surreptitious kiss when the saleswoman was not looking, and a warm
blue sweater for Nancy, and, quite incidentally, an eighteen-
dollar overcoat for Bert.

Nancy's lip trembled over this last purchase. They were nice
overcoats, remarkable for the price, indeed--"marked down from
twenty-five." But--but she had wanted him to spend every cent of
the fifty dollars for a STUNNING coat! Bert laughed at her April
face. He took her triumphantly to the fifty-cent luncheon and they
talked over it for a blissful hour. And when she left him at the
office door, Nancy consoled herself by drifting into one of the
near-by second-hand bookshops, and buying him a tiny Keats,
"Pepy's Diary" somewhat shabby as to cover, and George's "Progress
and Poverty," at ten cents apiece. These books were piled at
Bert's place that night, and gave him almost as much pleasure as
the overcoat did.

And even Nancy had to confess that the disputed garment looked
warm and thick, when it came home in its green box, and that it
was "fun" to open the other packages, and find the sweater,
looking so wooly and comfortable, and the big basket destined for
so precious a freight! She and Bert laughed and chattered over the
thick papers and strings that bound the freezer and the cooker,
and made chocolate ice-cream for dinner on Sunday, and never ate
their breakfast oatmeal without a rapturous appreciation of the
cooker.




Chapter Seven


She was still the centre of his universe and her own when she
walked with her hand on his arm, to the little hospital around the
corner, on a sweet April morning. The slow coming of spring had
brought her a new tenderness and a new dependence, and
instinctively she felt that, when she came home again, she would
be a new Nancy. The wistfulness that marks any conscious human
change had been hers for many days now; she was not distrustful,
she was not unhappy, but she was sobered and thoughtful.

"We HAVE been happy, haven't we, Bert?" she said, more than once.

"We always will be, my darling! You know that."

But she would only smile at him wisely, for reply. She was still
happy, happier perhaps than ever. But she knew that she was no
longer the mistress of her own happiness--it lay in other hands
now.

So the universe was turned upside down for Nancy, and she lost,
once and for all her position as its centre. The world, instead of
a safe and cheerful place, became full of possible dangers for the
baby, Albert the eighth. Nancy, instead of a self-reliant,
optimistic woman, was only a weary, feeble, ignorant person who
doubted her own power to protect this priceless treasure.

He was a splendid baby--that was part of the trouble. He was too
splendid, he had never been equalled, and could never be replaced,
and she would go stark, staring mad if anything happened to him!
Nancy almost went mad, as it was. If the Cullinan Diamond had been
placed in Nancy's keeping, rather than worry about it as she
worried about Junior, she would have flung it gaily into the East
River. But she could not dispose of the baby; her greatest horror
was the thought of ever separating from him, the fear that some
day Bert might want to send him, the darling, innocent thing, at
fourteen, to boarding-school, or that there might be a war, and
Junior might enlist!

She showed him to visiting friends in silence. When Nancy had led
them in to the bedroom, and raised a shade so that the tempered
sun light revealed the fuzzy head and shut eyes and rotund linen-
swathed form of Junior, she felt that words were unnecessary. She
never really saw the baby's face, she saw something idealized,
haloed, angelic. In later year she used to say that none of the
hundreds of snapshots Bert took of him really did the child
justice. Junior had been the most exquisitely beautiful baby that
any one ever saw, everyone said so.

When Bert got home at night, she usually had a request to make of
him. Would he just LOOK at Junior? No, he was all RIGHT, only he
had hardly wanted his three o'clock nursing, and he was sleeping
so HARD--

And at this point, if she was tired--and she was always tired!--
Nancy would break into tears. "Bert--hadn't we better ask Colver
to come and see him?" she would stammer, eagerly.

Ten minutes later she would be laughing, as she served Bert his
dinner. Of course he was all right, only, being alone with him all
day, she got to worrying. And she was tired.

Poor Nancy, she was not to know rest or leisure for many years to
come. She was clever, and as resolutely as she had solved their
first, simple problem, she set about solving this new one. They
had forty dollars a week with which to manage now, but the extra
money seemed only a special dispensation to provide for the
growing demands of Junior.

Junior needed a coach, a crib, new shirts--"he is getting immense,
the darling!" was Nancy's one rapturous comment, when four of
these were bought at sixty cents each. In November he needed two
quarts of milk daily, and what his mother called "an ouncer" to
take the top-milk safely from the bottle, and a small ice box for
the carefully prepared bottles, and the bottles themselves. He
always needed powder and safety-pins and new socks, and presently
he had to have a coloured woman to do his washing, for Nancy was
growing stronger and more interested in life in general, and came
to the conclusion that he might safely be left for a few moments
with Esmeralda, now and then.

He paid for these favours in his own way, and neither Bert nor
Nancy ever felt that it was inadequate. When his sober fat face
wrinkled into a smile of welcome to his father, Bert was moved
almost to tears. When she wheeled him through the streets, royally
benign after a full bottle, rosy-cheeked in his wooly white cap,
Nancy felt almost too rich. Junior filled all the gaps in her
life, it mattered not what she lacked while she had Junior.

The forty dollar income melted as quickly as the twenty-five
dollar one, and far more mysteriously. Nancy would have felt once
that forty dollars every week was riches, but between Junior's
demands, and the little leakage of Esmeralda's wages, and her
hearty lunch twice a week, and the milk, and the necessarily less-
careful marketing, they seemed to be just where they were before.

"There must be some way of living that we can afford!" mused
Nancy, one March morning at the breakfast table, when the world
looked particularly bright to the young Bradleys. Junior, curly-
headed, white-clad, and excited over a hard crust of toast, sat
between his parents, who interrupted their meal to kiss his fat
fists, the dewy back of his neck under the silky curls, and even
the bare toes that occasionally appeared on the board.

This was Sunday, and for months it had been the custom to weigh
Junior on Sunday, a process that either put Nancy and Bert into a
boastful mood for the day, or reduced the one to tearful silence,
and the other to apprehensive bravado. But now the baby was
approaching his first anniversary, and it was perfectly obvious
that his weight was no longer a matter of concern. He was so
large, so tall, and so fat that one of Nancy's daily satisfactions
was to have other mothers, in the park, ask her his age. She
looked at him with fond complacency rather than apprehension now,
feeling that every month and week of his life made him a little
more sure of protracted existence, and herself a little more safe
as his mother.

"How do you mean--afford?" Bert asked. "We pay our bills, and
we're not in debt."

"When I say 'afford,'" Nancy answered, "I mean that we do not live
without a frightful amount of worry and fuss about money. To just
keep out of debt, and make ends meet, is not my idea of life!"

"It's the way lots of people live--if they're lucky," Bert
submitted, picking Junior's damp crust from the floor, eyeing it
dubiously, and substituting another crust in its place.

"Well, it's all wrong!" Nancy stated positively. "There should be
a comfortable living for everyone in this world who works even
half as hard as you do--and if any one wants to work harder, let
him have the luxuries!"

"That's socialism, Nance."

She raised her pretty brows innocently.

"Is it? Well, I'm not a socialist. I guess I just don't
understand."

She knew, as the weeks went by, that there were other things she
could not understand. Toil as she might, from morning until night,
there was always something undone. It puzzled her strangely.

Other women had even harder problems, what did THEY do? Few women
had steady, clever husbands like Bert. Few had energy and
enthusiasm like hers. But she was so tired, all the time, that
even when the daily routine ran smoothly, and the marketing and
Junior's naps and meals occurred on schedule time, the result
hardly seemed worth while. She whisked through breakfast and
breakfast dishes, whisked through the baby's bath, had her house
in order when he awakened from his nap, wheeled him to market,
wheeled him home for another bottle and another nap. Then it was
time for her own meal, and there were a few more dishes, and some
simple laundry work to do, and then again the boy was dressed, and
the perambulator was bumped out of the niche below the stairs, and
they went out again. The hardest hour of all, in the warm
lengthening days of spring, was between five and six. Junior was
tired and cross, dinner preparations were under way, the table
must be set, one more last bottle warmed. When Bert came in,
Nancy, flushed and tired, was ready, and he might play for a few
minutes with Junior before he was tucked up. But the relaxation of
the meal was trying to Nancy, and the last dishes a weary drag.
She would go to her chair, when they were done, and sit stupidly
staring ahead of her. Sometimes, in this daze, she would reach for
the fallen sheets of the evening paper, and read them
indifferently. Sometimes she merely battled with yawns, before
taking herself wearily to bed.

"Can I get you your book, dear?" Bert might ask.

"No-o-o! Pm too sleepy. I put my head down on the bed beside
Junior to-day, and I've been as heavy as lead ever since! Besides,
I forgot to wash my hands, and they're dishwatery."

"What tires you so, do you suppose?"

"Oh, nothing special, and everything! I think watching the baby is
very tiring. He never uses all my time, and yet I can't do
anything else while I have him. And then he's getting so
mischievous--he makes work!"

"What'll you do next year?" Bert questioned sometimes dubiously.

"Oh, we'll manage!" And with a sleepy smile, and a sleepy kiss,
Nancy would trail away, only too grateful to reach her bed after
the hard hours.

Bert had carefully calculated upon her spring wardrobe, and she
became quite her animated self over the excitement of selecting
new clothes. They left Esmeralda in charge of Junior, and made an
afternoon of it, and dined down town in the old way. Over the meal
Bert told her that he had made exactly three hundred dollars at a
blow, in a commission, and that she and the boy were going to the
country for six weeks.

This led to a wonderful hour, when they compared feelings, and
reviewed their adventure. Nancy marvelled at the good fortune that
followed them, "we are marvellously lucky, aren't we, Bert?" she
asked, appreciatively. She had just spent almost a hundred dollars
for her summer clothes and the boy's! And now they were really
going to the blessed country, to be free for six weeks from
planning meals and scraping vegetables and stirring cereals.
Radiantly, they discussed mountains and beaches, even buying a
newspaper, on the hot walk home, to pore over in search of the
right place.




Chapter Eight


"The Old Hill House," on the north Connecticut line, seemed almost
too good to be true. It was an unpretentious country hotel, and
Nancy and Junior settled themselves in one of its hot, second-
story rooms feeling almost guiltily happy. Nancy kissed Bert good-
bye on the first Monday morning assuring him that she had NOTHING
to do! To go down to meals, and they were good meals, without the
slightest share in the work of preparing them, and to be able to
wear dainty clothes without the ruinous contact with the kitchen,
seemed too luxurious.

But she was not quite idle, none-the-less. Junior had to have his
morning bath, after breakfast, and while he was in the tub, his
mother washed six bottles in the hand-basin. Then, on a tiltish
alcohol stove, Nancy had to boil his barley for twenty endless
minutes. When the stove upset there was an additional half-hour's
hard work, but even when it did not, it was usually ten o'clock
before she went down to the kitchen for his two quarts of milk.
Then came the usual careful work with the "ouncer," and the six
filled bottles were put into Nancy's own small ice-box, to which
one of the maids was then supposed to bring a small piece of ice.
The left-over milk was taken back to the kitchen, and Nancy washed
the little saucepan in her hand-basin, and put away stove and
barley. By this time Junior was ready for another bottle, and when
he went to sleep his mother went down to the laundry with an arm-
full of small garments.

There was no other way. Labour was scarce in the village, and
Nancy could get no one of the housemaids to take upon herself this
daily task. Women from the outside were not allowed in the hotel
laundry, and so the task fell naturally to the baby's mother. She
assumed it gladly, but when the line of snowy linen was blowing
free in the summer wind, and the cake of soap had been put on its
special rafter, and the tubs were draining, Nancy usually went up
to her bedroom, tiptoeing in because of the sleeper, and flung
herself down for a heavy nap.

After luncheon she gathered in her linen and watched by the
wideawake baby. Then they went down to the cool shade by the
creek, and Junior threw stones, and splashed fat hands in the
shallows, and his mother watched him adoringly. It never entered
her head that she was anything but privileged to be able to slave
for him. He was always and supremely worth while. Nancy's only
terrors were that something would happen to rob her of the honour.
She wanted no other company; Junior was her world, except when
Saturday's noon train brought Bert. She told her husband, and
meant it, that she was too happy; they did not need the world.

But sometimes the world intruded, and turned Nancy's hard-won
philosophy to ashes. She did not want to be idle, and she did not
want to be rich, but when she saw women younger than herself, in
no visible way inferior, who were both, her calm was shattered for
a time.

One day she and Bert wheeled the boy, in his small cart, down a
pleasant unfamiliar roadway, and across a rustic bridge, and,
smiling over their adventure, found themselves close to a low,
wide-spreading Colonial house, with striped awnings shading its
wide porches, and girls and men in white grouped about a dozen
tea-tables. Tennis courts were near by, and several motor-cars
stood beside the pebbled drive.

A gray-uniformed attendant came to them, civilly. Did they wish to
see some member of the club! "Oh, it is a club then," Bert asked,
a little too carelessly. "It is the Silver River Country Club,
sir."

"Oh, well, we'll get out of here, then," Bert said good naturedly,
as he turned the perambulator on the gravel under a hundred casual
eyes. He and Nancy chatted quite naturally about their mistake, as
they re-crossed the rustic bridge, and went up the unfamiliar
roadway again. But a cloud lay over them for the rest of that day,
and that night Nancy said:

"What must one have--or be--to belong to a thing like that, Bert?"

"To--oh, that club?" Bert answered, "Oh, it isn't so much. A
hundred initiation, and a hundred a year, I suppose." "We could do
that--some year," Nancy predicted.

"Well, it isn't only that. There's no use joining a country club,"
Bert said musingly, "unless you can do the thing decently. It
means signing checks for tea, and cocktails, and keeping a car,
and the Lord knows what! It means tennis rackets and golf sticks
and tips and playing bridge for a stake. It all counts up!"

"Where do all those people get the money?" Nancy asked
resentfully. "They looked common, to me!"

"We'll get there, never you fret!" Bert answered vaguely. But long
after he was asleep his wife lay awake in the hot hotel bedroom,
and thought darkly of fate. She came of gentle stock, and she
would meet her lot bravely, but oh, how she longed for ease, for a
little luxury, for coolness and darkness and silence and service,
for frothy laces and the touch of silk!

Lights came up from the lawn before the hotel. It was Sunday
night, and the young people were making the most of the precious
week-end. Nancy heard a clock somewhere strike ten, and then the
single stroke for the half-hour. She got up and sat beside the
window; the night was insufferably close, with not a breath of
air.

Junior sighed; his mother arose, stricken, and lighted a shaded
lamp. Half-past-ten and she had forgotten his bottle!

When she carried it over to him, he was wide awake, his face
sober, his aureole of bright hair damp with the heat. But at the
sight of his playfellow his four new teeth came suddenly into
sight. Here was "Mugger," the unfailing solace and cheer of his
life. He gave her a beatific smile, and seized the bottle with a
rapturous "glug." Bert was roused by her laughter, and the soft
sound of kisses.




Chapter Nine


When the second boy came, in early December the Bradleys decided
to move. They moved into a plain, old-fashioned flat, with two
enormous rooms, two medium-sized, and two small ones, in an
unfashionable street, and in a rather inaccessible block. There
was a drug store at the corner opposite them, but the park was
only a long block away, and the back rooms were flooded with
sunshine. Nancy had only two flights of stairs to climb, instead
of four, and plenty of room for the two cribs and the high chair.
Also she had room for Elite, the coloured girl who put herself at
the Bradleys' disposal for three dollars a week. Elite knew
nothing whatever, but she had willing hands and willing feet. She
had the sudden laugh of a maniac, but she held some strange power
over the Bradley babies and they obeyed her lightest word.

They moved on the day after Christmas, when Edward Barrett Bradley
was only three weeks old. Elite and Bert did the moving, and Nancy
only laughed weakly at their experiences. Junior contracted
chicken-pox during this time, and the family was quarantined on
New Year's Eve.

Bert and his wife celebrated the occasion with a quart of oysters,
eaten with hat-pins from a quart measure. The invalid slumbered in
the same room, behind a screen. He was having a very light attack,
and Nancy, who had been hanging over him all day, was reassured
to-night, and in wild spirits. She laughed the tears into her eyes
when Albert Senior, hearing the tentative horns at nine o'clock,
telephoned the fish market for the wherewithal to celebrate. Bert
had been hanging pictures, and was dirty and tired, but they got
quite hysterical with merriment over their feast. The "new boy,"
as they called the baby, presently was brought in, and had his own
meal, before the old-fashioned coal fire. Nancy sat dreaming over
the small curved form.

"We'll think this is very funny, some day!" she said, dauntlessly.

Bert merely looked at her. But after a while he tried to tell her
what he thought about it, and so made their third New Year
memorable to her forever.

She settled down quickly, in the new quarters; some visionary,
romancing phase of Nancy's character and Nancy's roses disappeared
for a time. She baked and boiled, sewed on buttons, bandaged
fingers, rose gallantly to the days' demands. She learned the
economical value of soups and salads, and schooled herself, at
least every other day, to leave the boys for an hour or two with
Elite, and walk out for a little bracing solitude. Bert watched
her in admiring amazement. His wife was a wonder!

Sometimes, on a cold afternoon, she walked down to meet Bert, and
they went together to dinner. Their talk was practical now, of
suits and rubber overshoes and milk bills. And Nancy was too tired
to walk home; they went home in the rubber-scented dampness of a
surface car.

Sometimes, as she went through the morning routine, the baths,
bottles, dishes, the picking up, the disheartening conferences
over the ice box, she wondered what had become of the old southern
belle, Nancy Barrett, who had laughed and flirted and only a few
years ago, who had been such a strong and pretty and confident
egotist? There was no egotism left in Nancy now, she was only a
busy woman in a world of busy women. She knew backache and
headache, and moods of weary irritation. The cut of her gowns, the
little niceties of table-service or of children's clothing no
longer concerned her. She merely wanted her family comfortable,
fed and housed and clothed, and well. Nancy could advise other
women about the capable handling of children, before her firstborn
was three years old.

They never went to "The Old Hill House" again, but they found a
primitive but comfortable hotel in the Maine woods, for Ned's
second summer, and for several summers after that. Here Nancy
slept and tramped and rested happily, welcoming Bert rapturously
every week-end. In near-by cabins, young matrons like herself were
likewise solving the children's summer problem, she was never
lonely, and the eight free, pine-scented weeks were cloudlessly
happy. She told Bert that it was the only sensible solution for
persons in moderate circumstances; old clothes, simple food, utter
solitude.

"There are no comparisons to spoil things," Nancy said,
contentedly. "I know I'm small-minded, Bert. But seeing things I
can't have does upset me, somehow!"




Chapter Ten


Nevertheless, she accepted the invitation that came from Bert's
cousin Dorothy, one autumn, for a week-end visit. Dorothy had
married now, and had a baby. She was living in a rented "place,"
up near Rhinecliff, she wrote, and she wanted to see something of
Cousin Bert.

Neither Bert nor Nancy could afterward remember exactly why they
went. It was partly curiosity, perhaps; partly the strong lure
exerted by Dorothy's casual intimation that "the car" would come
for them, and that this particular week-end was "the big dance, at
the club." Bert chanced to have a new suit, and Nancy had a
charming blue taffeta that seemed to her good enough for any place
or anybody.

The boys were asked, but they did not take them. Ned was almost
two now, and Junior past three, and they behaved beautifully with
Hannah, the quiet old Danish woman who had been with them since
they came back from the woods, the year before. Nancy, full of
excited anticipation, packed her suit-case daintily, and fluttered
downstairs as happily as a girl, when a hundredth glance at the
street showed the waiting motor at last.

Hawkes was the chauffeur. "To Mr. Bradley's office please,
Hawkes," said Nancy. She could not think of anything friendly to
say to him, as they wheeled through the streets. Bert kept them
waiting, and once or twice she said "I can't think what's delaying
Mr. Bradley." But Hawkes did not answer.

Presently Bert came out and greeted Nancy and Hawkes.

"But I thought Mrs. Benchley was coming into town to-day," Bert
said. Dorothy was now Mrs. George Benchley. Hawkes spoke at last.
"An old friend of Mrs. Benchley has unexpectedly arrived this
morning, sir, and she has changed her mind." "Oh, all right," said
Bert, grinning at Nancy as the pleasant drive began.

It was all wonderful; the bright autumn sunshine, the sense of
freedom and leisure in the early afternoon, and the lovely roads
they followed. Bert however, seemed to be thinking of his sons,
and asked of them more than once. And Nancy could not rid herself
of an uncomfortable suspicion that whoever Dorothy's old friend
was, she had changed Dorothy's plans, and perhaps made the coming
of the Bradleys untimely. Now and then husband and wife smiled at
each other and said "This is fun!"

Dorothy's "place" was a beautiful estate, heavily wooded, wound
with white driveways, and equipped with its own tennis courts, and
its boathouse on the river. The house was enormous, and naturally
had assumed none of the personality of its occupants, in this
casual summer tenancy. There were countless rooms, all filled with
tables and chairs and rugs and desks and bowls of flowers; and
several maids came and went in the interest of the comfort of the
house. There were seven or eight other guests besides the
Bradleys, and they all seemed to know each other well. The
unexpected guest was a young Mrs. Catlin affectionately mentioned
by Dorothy in every other breath as "Elaine"; she and Dorothy had
been taken to Europe together, after their schooldays, and had
formed an intimacy then.

Dorothy came into the big hall to meet her cousin and his wife,
and, with a little laugh, kissed Bert. She looked particularly
young and lovely in what Nancy supposed to be a carefully-selected
costume; later she realized that all Dorothy's clothes gave this
impression. She said that the baby was out, when Nancy asked for
him, and that Katharine would take care of them.

Katharine, an impassive maid, led them upstairs, and to the large
room in which their suit cases already stood. Dorothy had said,
"After you change, come down and have something to drink!" but
Nancy had nothing prettier than the taffeta, except her evening
gown, and as the sunshine was streaming into the room, she could
not change to that. So she merely freshened her appearance, and
wasted fifteen or twenty minutes in a close inspection of the
room, before they went down. To her somewhat shy question Bert
responded enthusiastically, "You look lovely!"

They went through empty open rooms, talking as naturally as they
could, and smilingly joined the others on the porch. Tea and other
drinks were being dispensed by Elaine, whose attention was
meanwhile absorbed by two young men. Dorothy, lying almost flat in
a wicker chair, with her small silk-shod ankles crossed, was
lazily arguing some question of golf scores.

She introduced the new-comers, and as Bert, somewhat more at home
in his cousin's house than his wife was, fell into conversation
with the middle-aged man nearest him, Dorothy dutifully addressed
herself to Nancy. They spoke of Bert's mother, and of Boston, and
Dorothy asked Nancy if she liked tennis--or golfing--or yachting?
There was to be quite a large dance at the club to-night, and an
entertainment before it.

"Isn't Dorothy a wonder, Mrs. Bradley?" asked Elaine. "She's going
to have twenty people to dinner, she runs this big house, she's
got a baby not yet six months old, and she looks about sixteen!"

"You must have wonderful maids," suggested Nancy, smiling.

"I have!" said Dorothy amusedly, "They're crazy about me--I don't
know why, because I work them like dogs. But of course we're away
a lot, and then they always have parties," she added, "and they
run things pretty much to suit themselves. But we have good meals,
don't we, Elaine?" she asked, childishly.

"Heavenly!" said Elaine. Nancy, trying to appear brightly
sympathetic, smiled again.

But she and Bert dressed for dinner almost silently, an hour
later. It was all delightful and luxurious, truly, and they were
most considerately and hospitably accepted by the entire
establishment. But something was wrong. Nancy did not know what it
was, and she did not want to risk a mere childish outburst, so
easily construed into jealousy. Perhaps it WAS jealousy.

She found herself arguing, as she dressed. This sort of thing was
not LIFE, after all. The quiet wife of an obscure man, rejoicing
in her home and her children, had a thousand times more real
pleasure. These well-dressed idle people didn't count, after all. ...

"Sort of nice of Dorothy to send Hawkes in for us," Bert said;
"Did you hear her explain that she thought we'd be more
comfortable with Hawkes, so she and Mrs. Catlin kept the younger
man?"

"Considerate!" Nancy said, lifelessly.

"Isn't it a wonder she isn't spoiled?" Bert pursued.

"Really it is!"

"Benchley looks like an ass," Bert conceded. "But he's not so bad.
He's in the firm now, you know, and Dorothy was just telling me
that he's taken hold wonderfully."

"Isn't that nice?" Nancy said, mildly. She was struggling with her
hair, which entirely refused to frame her face in its usual rich
waves, and lay flat or split into unexpected partings despite her
repeated efforts. "How's that now, Bert? "she asked, turning
toward him with an arrangement half-completed.

"Well--that's all RIGHT--" he began uncertainly. Nancy, dropping
the brown strands, and tossing the whole hot mass free, felt that
she could burst into tears.




Chapter Eleven


The dinner was an ordeal; her partner was unfortunately interested
only in motor-cars, of which Nancy could find little that was
intelligent to say. She felt like what she was, a humble relative
out of her element. After dinner they were all packed into cars,
and swept to the club.

Darkness and the sound of a comedian's voice in monologue warned
them as they entered that the entertainment was begun; after much
whispering, laughing and stumbling however, they were piloted to
chairs, and for perhaps an hour and a half Nancy was quite alone,
and much entertained. Then the lights went up, and the crowd
surged noisily to and fro.

She lost sight of Bert, but was duly introduced to new people; and
they spoke of the successful entertainment, and of the club-house.
Nancy danced only once or twice, and until almost two o'clock sat
talking, principally with a pleasant old lady, who had a daughter
to chaperon.

Then the first departures began, and Nancy had a merry good-night
from Dorothy, called over the latter's powdered shoulder as she
danced, and went home. She was silent, as she undressed, but Bert,
yawning, said that he had had a good time. He said that Dorothy
had urged them to stay until Monday morning, but he did not see
how he could make it. He hated to get started late at the office
Monday morning. Nancy eagerly agreed.

"You do feel so?" he asked, in satisfaction. "Well, that settles
it, then! We'll go home to-morrow."

And home they did go, on the following afternoon. Nancy, counting
the hours, nevertheless enjoyed the delicious breakfast, when she
had quite a spirited chat with one or two of the men guests, who
were the only ones to appear. Then she and Bert walked into the
village to church, and wandering happily home, were met by Dorothy
in the car, and whirled to the club. Here the pleasant morning air
was perfumed with strong cigars already, and while Bert played
nine holes of golf, and covered himself with glory, Nancy won five
rubbers of bridge, and gained the respect of Dorothy and Elaine at
the same time. She was more like her spontaneous self at luncheon
than at any other time during the visit, and driving home, agreed
with Bert that, when you got to know them, Dorothy's set was not
so bad!

"Her baby is frightfully ugly, but that doesn't matter so much,
with a boy," said Nancy. "And I don't think that a woman like
Elaine is so rude as she is stupid. They simply can't see anything
else but their way of thinking, and dressing, and talking, and so
they stare at you as if you were a Hottentot! I had a nice time,
especially to-day--but never again!"

"Dorothy never did have any particular beau," Bert observed, "She
just likes to dress in those little silky, stripy things, and have
everyone praising her, all the time. She'll ask us again,
sometime, when she remembers us."




Chapter Twelve


But it was almost a year before Dorothy thought of her cousins
again, and then the proud Nancy wrote her that the arrival of Anne
Bradley was daily expected, and no plans could be made at present.
Anne duly came, a rose of a baby, and Nancy said that luck came
with her.

Certainly Anne was less than a week old when Bert told his wife
that old Souchard, whose annoying personality had darkened all
Bert's office days, had retired, gone back to Paris! And Bert was
head man, "in the field." His salary was not what Souchard's had
been, naturally, but the sixty dollars would be doubled, some
weeks, by commissions; there would be lots of commissions, now!
Now they could save, announced Nancy.

But they did not save. They moved again, to a pleasanter
apartment, and Hannah did washing and cooking, and Grace came, to
help with the children. Nancy began to make calls again, and had
the children's pictures taken, for Grandmother Bradley, and
sometimes gave luncheons, with cards to follow. She and Bert could
go to the theatre again, and, if it was raining, could come home
in a taxicab.

It was a modest life, even with all this prosperity. Nancy had
still enough to do, mending piled up, marketing grew more
complicated, and on alternate Thursdays and Sundays she herself
had to fill Hannah's place, or Grace's place. They began to think
that life would be simpler in the country, and instead of taking
the children to the parks, as was their happy Sunday custom, they
went now to Jersey, to Westchester, and to Staten Island.

The houses they passed, hundreds and hundreds of them, filled them
with enthusiasm. Sunday was a pleasant day, in the suburbs. The
youngsters, everywhere, were in white--frolicking about open
garage doors, bareheaded on their bicycles, barefooted beside
beaches or streams. Their mothers, also white-clad, were busy with
agreeable pursuits--gathering roses, or settling babies for naps
in shaded hammocks. Lawn mowers clicked in the hands of the white-
clad men, or a group of young householders gathered for tennis, or
for consultation about a motor-car.

Nancy and Bert began to tentatively ask about rents, to calculate
coal and commutation tickets. The humblest little country house,
with rank neglected grass about it, and a kitchen odorous of new
paint and old drains, held a strange charm for them.

"They could LIVE out-of-doors!" said Nancy, of the children. "And
I want their memories to be sweet, to be homelike and natural. The
city really isn't the place for children!"

"I'd like it!" Bert said, for like most men he was simple in his
tastes, and a vision of himself and his sons cutting grass,
picking tomatoes and watering gooseberry bushes had a certain
appeal. "I'd like to have the Cutters out for a week-end!" he
suggested. Nancy smiled a little mechanically. She did not like
Amy Cutter.

"And we could ask the Featherstones!" she remembered suddenly.

"Gosh! Joe Featherstone is the limit!" Bert said, mildly.

"Well, however!" Nancy concluded, hastily, "We COULD have people
out, that's the main thing!"




Chapter Thirteen


For a year or two the Bradleys kept up these Sunday expeditions
without accomplishing anything definite. But they accomplished a
great amount of indirect happiness, ate a hundred picnic lunches,
and accumulated ten times that many amusing, and inspiring, and
pleasant, recollections. Bert carried the lovely Anne; Nancy had
the thermos bottle and Anne's requirements in a small suit-case;
and the boys had a neat cardboard box of lunch apiece.

And then some months after their seventh anniversary, Bert sold
the Witcher Place.

This was the most important financial event of their lives. The
Witcher Place had been so long in the hands of Bert's firm for
sale that it had become a household word in the Bradley family,
and in other families. Nobody ever expected to pocket the handsome
commission that the owner and the firm between them had placed
upon the deal, and to Nancy the thing was only a myth until a
certain autumn Sunday, when she and Bert and the children were
roaming about the Jersey hills, and stumbled upon the place.

There it was; the decaying mansion, the neglected avenue and
garden, the acres and acres of idle orchard and field. The faded
signposts identified it, "Apply to the Estate of Eliot Witcher."

"Bert, this isn't the Witcher Place!" exclaimed his wife.

Bert was as interested as she. They pushed open the old gate, and
ate their luncheon that day sitting on the lawn, under the elms
that the first Eliot Witcher had planted a hundred years ago. The
children ran wild over the garden, Anne took her nap on the leaf-
strewn side porch.

"Bert--they never want two hundred thousand dollars for just
this!"

Bert threw away his cigar, and flung himself luxuriously down for
a nap.

"They'll get it, Nance. Somebody'll develop a real estate deal
here some day. They must have a hundred acres here. You'll see it-
-'Witcher Park' or 'Witcher Manor.' The old chap who inherited it
is as rich as Croesus, he was in the office the other day, he
wants to sell.--Hello! I was in the office--garden--and so I said-
-if you please--"

Bert was going to sleep. His wife laughed sympathetically as the
staggering words stopped, and deep and regular breathing took
their place. She sat on in the afternoon sunlight, looking
dreamily about her, and trying to picture life here a hundred
years ago; the gracious young mistress of the new mansion, the
ringlets and pantalettes, the Revloutionary[sic] War still well
remembered, and the last George on the throne. And now the house
was cold and dead, and strange little boys, in sandals and sturdy
galatea, were shouting in the stable.

Perhaps she was drowsy herself; she started awake, and touched
Bert. An old man and a young man had come in the opened gate, and
were speaking to her.

"I beg your pardon!" It was the young man. "But--but do you own
this place?"

"No--just picnicking!" said Bert, wide awake.

"But it is for sale?" asked the old man. Bert got up, and brushed
the leaves from his clothes, and the three men walked down the
drive together. Nancy, half-comprehending, all-hoping looked after
them. She saw Bert give the young man his card, and glance at the
same time at the faded sign, as if he appealed to it to confirm
his claim.

She hardly dared speak when he came back. Anne awoke, and the boys
must be summoned for the home trip. Bert moved dreamily, he seemed
dazed. Only once did he speak of the Witcher Place that night, and
then it was to say:

"Perry--that's that old chap's name--said that he would be in this
week, at the office. I'll bet he doesn't come."

"No, I don't suppose he will," Nancy said.

"I impressed it on his son that it meant--something, to me, to
have him ask for me, if he DID come," said Bert, then.

"Bert, you'd better skip lunches, this week," Nancy suggested
thoughtfully.

"I will--that's a good idea," he said. She noticed that he was
more than usually gentle and helpful with the children, that
night. Nancy felt his strain, and her own, and went through Monday
sick with suspense.

"Nothing doing!" said Bert cheerfully, coming in on Monday
evening. Tuesday went by--Wednesday went by. On Thursday Nancy had
an especially nice dinner, because Bert's mother had come down,
for a few days' visit. The two women were good friends, and Nancy
was never so capable, brisk, and busy as when these sharp but
approving eyes were upon her.

The elder Mrs. Bradley approved of the children heartily, and
boasted about them and their clever mother when she went home.
Bert's wife was so careful as to manners, so sensible about food
and clothes, such a wonderful manager.

To-night Anne was in her grandmother's lap, commandingly directing
the reading of a fairy-story. Whenever the plot seemed thin to
Anne she threw in a casual demand for additional lions, dragons or
giants, as her fancy dictated. Mrs. Bradley giving Nancy a
tremendously amused and sympathetic smile, supplied these horrors
duly, and the boys, supposedly eating their suppers at one end of
the dining-room table, alternately laughed at Anne and agonized
with her.

Nancy was superintending the boys, the elderly woman had a
comfortable chair by the fire, and Hannah was slowly and
ponderously setting the table. It was a pretty scene for Bert's
eyes to find, as he came in, and he gave his mother and his wife a
more than usually affectionate greeting.

Nancy followed him into their room, taking Anne. She was pleased
that the children had been so sweet with their grandmother,
pleased that her deep dish pie had come out so well, happy to be
cosy and safe at home while the last heavy rains of October
battened at the windows.

She had lowered Anne, already undressed, into her crib when Bert
suddenly drew her away, and tipped up her face with his hand under
her chin, and stared into her surprised eyes.

"Well, old girl, I got it! It was all settled inside of twenty
minutes, at five o'clock!"

"The--? But Bert---I don't understand--" Nancy stammered. And then
suddenly, with a rush of awed delight, "Bert Bradley! Not the
Witcher Place!"

"Yep!" Bert answered briefly. "He took it. It's all settled."




Chapter Fourteen


So the Bradleys had a bank account. And even before the precious
money was actually paid them, and deposited in the bank, Nancy
knew what they were going to do with it. There was only one
sensible thing for young persons who were raising a family on a
small salary to do. They must buy a country home.

No more city, no more rent-paying for Nancy and Bert. The bank
account had just five figures. Nancy and Bert said that they could
buy a lovely home anywhere for nine thousand, and have a whole
thousand left for furniture and incidentals. They could begin to
live!

A week later they began their hunt, and all through the white
winter and the lovely spring they hunted. They asked friends about
it, and read magazines, and the advertisements in the Sunday
papers.

Unfortunately, however, in all the Saturdays and the Sundays they
spent hunting for their home, they never saw anything that cost
just nine thousand dollars. There were hundreds of places that
cost sixty-five hundred or seven thousand. After that prices made
a clean leap to ten thousand, to twelve thousand, to fourteen--
"No, it's no use our looking at those!" said the young Bradleys,
sighing.

They learned a great deal about houses, and some of their dreams
died young. It was no use, the agents told Nancy, to think about a
pretty, shabby, old farm-house, for those had been snapped up. If
she found one, it would be a foolish investment, because it
probably would be surrounded by unrestricted property.
Restrictions were great things, and all developments had them in
large or small degree. There were developments that obliged the
purchaser of land to submit his building plans to a committee,
before he could build.

Nancy laughed that she shouldn't care for THAT. And when
restrictions interfered with her plans she very vigorously opposed
them. She told Bert that she would not consider places that did
not allow fences, and chickens, and dogs, and all the other
pleasant country things.

Sometimes, in an economical mood, the Bradleys looked at the six
and seven thousand dollar bargains. It had to be admitted that
some of them were extremely nice. Nice neighbourhoods, young trees
set out along the street--trees about the size of carriage whips--
nice sunny bathroom, nice bedrooms--"we could change these
papers," Nancy always said--good kitchen and closets, gas all
ready to connect, and an open fireplace in the dining room. And so
back to the front hall again, and to a rather blank moment when
the agent obviously expected a definite decision, and the Bradleys
felt unable to make it.

"What don't you like about the place?" the agent would ask.

"Well--" Bert would flounder. "I don't know. I'll talk it over
with my wife!"

"Better decide to take it, Mr. Bradley," the agent, whoever he
was, would urge seriously, "We're selling these places awfully
fast, and when they're gone you won't find anything else like
them. It's only because this chap that's been holding this
property suddenly--"

"Yes, I know, you told me about his dropping dead," Bert would
hastily remind him. "Well--I'll see. I'll let you know. Come on,
kids!"

And the Bradley family would walk away, not too hastily, but
without looking back.

"I don't know--but it was so like all the others," Nancy would
complain, "It was so utterly commonplace! Now there, Bert, right
in the village street, with the trees, is a lovely place, marked
'For Sale.' Do let's just pass it!"

"Darling girl, you couldn't touch that for twenty thousand. Right
there by the track, too!"

"But it looks so homelike!"

"That old barn in the back looks sort of odd to me; they've got a
sort of livery stable there in the back, Nance, you couldn't stand
that!"

"No." Nancy's tone and manner would droop, she would go slowly by,
discouraged and tired until another week end.




Chapter Fifteen


One day Bert told Nancy that a man named Rogers had been in the
office, and had been telling him about a place called Marlborough
Gardens. Usually Bert's firm did not touch anything small enough
to interest him as a home, but in this case the whole development
was involved, and the obliging Mr. Rogers chanced to mention to
Bert that he had some bargains down there at the Gardens.

"There's nothing in it for him, you understand?" said Bert to his
wife, "But he's an awfully decent fellow, and he got interested. I
told him about what we'd been doing, and he roared. He says that
we're to come down Sunday, and see what he's got, and if we don't
like it he can at any rate give us some dope about the rest of the
places."

"And where is it, Bert?"

"It's down on the Sound side of Long Island, thirty-seven minutes
out of town, right on the water."

"Oh, Bert, it sounds wonderful?"

"He says that it's the most amazing thing that ever has been put
on the market. He says that Morgan and Rockefeller both have put
money into it, on the quiet."

"Well, if they can risk their little all, we can take a chance!"
giggled Nancy.

"Of course that isn't generally known," Bert warned her, "but it
just goes to show you that it's a BIG THING. He was telling me
about this feller that had a gorgeous home just built there, and
his wife's mother gets ill, and they all move to California. He
said I could look at it, and that it would speak for itself."

"Did he say whether there were any trees?"

"He said this particular place had wonderful trees."

"And what's the price, Bee?"

Bert knew that this was his weak point.

"He didn't say, old girl."

Nancy looked rueful, her castle in the dust.

"Oh, BERT! It may be something awful!"

"No, it won't, for I'd just been telling him what we were looking
at, don't you see!"

"Oh, that so?" Nancy was relieved. "But it will be the first thing
_I_ ask him," she predicted.




Chapter Sixteen


However, on Sunday she forgot to ask him. The circumstances were
so unexpectedly pleasant as to banish from her head any pre-
arranged plan of procedure. It was a glowing June day, soft,
perfumed, and breezy. The Bradleys went to Butler's Hill, which
was "our station," as Nancy said, and there the agent met them,
with a car. He drove them himself the short mile from the railroad
to Marlborough Gardens.

"Isn't it one of those frightfully smart developments?" Nancy
asked, smiling uneasily.

"It's considered the finest home development on Long Island," the
agent admitted readily, "The place I'm going to show you--I'm
going to show you two or three--but the special place I want to
show you, was built for a HOME. There isn't a finer building
anywhere. Lansing, the man who built it, was a splendid fellow,
with a lovely wife--lovely woman. But her mother lives in
California, and she got to worrying--"

"Mr. Bradley told me," Nancy said sympathetically.

"Homes, and home-makers," pursued the agent, "That's what we need.
The people we have here are all quiet, home-loving folks, we don't
want show, we don't want display--"

"Well, that's our idea!" Bert approved. And he rather vexed his
inconsistent wife by adding hardily, "Remember that my top figure
is ten thousand, Rogers, will you?"

"Now, you wait and see what I have to show you, and then we'll
talk turkey," the other man said goodnaturedly. Anne, sitting on
her mother's lap beside him, gave him a sudden smile at the word
she recognized.

He wheeled the car smoothly through the great gates of cement,
looped with iron chains, that shut off the village herd from the
sacred ground. Nancy gave Bert an ecstatic glance; this was
wonderful! The scattered homes were all beautiful, all different.
Some were actual mansions, with wide-spreading wings and half a
dozen chimneys, but some were small and homelike, etched with the
stretching fingers of new vines, and surrounded by park-like
gardens. Even about the empty plots hedges had been planted, and
underbrush raked away, and the effect was indescribably trim and
orderly, "like England," said Nancy, who had never seen England.

As they slowly circled about, they caught glimpses of tennis
courts, beyond the lawns and trees, glimpses of the blue water of
the bay, glimpses of white, curving driveways. Here a shining
motor-car stood purring, there men in white paused with arrested
rackets, to glance up at the strangers from their tennis. Nancy
looked at Bert and Bert at Nancy, and their eyes confessed that
never in all the months of hunting had they seen anything like
THIS!

Presently they came to the end of the road, and to a richly wooded
plot that formed a corner to the whole tract. A garden had been
planted, but it was neglected now, and weeds had pushed up here
and there between the bricks of the path. The house was low and
spreading, under great locust and elm trees, a shingled brown
house, with two red chimneys and cottage casements. Over one hedge
the Bradleys looked down at the pebbled beach that belonged to all
the residents of Marlborough Gardens.

"Lansing called this place 'Holly Court,'" said the agent, leading
them to the front porch door, to which he skillfully fitted a key,
"That big holly bush there gave it its name; the bush is probably
fifty years old. Step in, Mrs. Bradley!"

"But notice the lovely Dutch door first, Bert, "Nancy said
eagerly. "See, Anne! On a hot day you can have it half open and
half shut, isn't that cunning?"

"The house is full of charming touches," Mr. Rogers said, "And you
may always trust a woman's eye to find them, Mr. Bradley! Women
are natural home-makers. My wife'll often surprise me; 'Why,
you've not got half enough closets, Paul,' she'll say. There's one
open fire-place, Mrs. Bradley, in your reception hall. You see the
whole plan of the house is informal. You've got another fire-place
in the dining room, and one in the master bedroom upstairs. Here's
a room they used as a den--bookshelves, and so on, and then beyond
is another tiled porch--very convenient for breakfast, or tea. You
see Lansing lived here; never has been rented, or anything like
that. He's selling it for practically what it cost him!"

"And what's that?" asked Bert, smiling, but not quite at his ease.

"Now, you wait a few minutes, Mr. Business Man!" Mr. Rogers said,
"What you think, and what I think, doesn't count much beside what
this little lady thinks. She's got to live in the house, and if
SHE likes it, why I guess you and I can come to terms!"

Nancy threw her husband a glance full of all amused tolerance at
this, but in her secret soul she rather liked it.

They went upstairs, where there were hardwood floors, and two
bathrooms, and mirrors in the bathroom doors. There was another
bathroom in the attic, and a fourth upstairs in the garage, with
two small bedrooms in each place. They must expect us to keep four
maids, Nancy hastily computed.

There was an upstair porch; "To shake a rug, Mrs. Bradley, or to
dry your hair, or for this young lady's supper," said the
delightful Mr. Rogers. A back stairway led down to tempting
culinary regions; a sharp exclamation burst from Nancy at the
sight of the great ice box, and the tiled sinks.

They walked about the plot, a large one. At the back, beside the
garage, they could look over a small but healthy hedge to more
beach, clustered with unusual shells at low tide, and the
straggling outskirts of the village. From the front, they looked
straight down a wide tree-shaded street, that lost itself in a
peaceful vista of great trees and vine-smothered stone walls.
"Holly Court" was quiet, it was naturally isolated, it seemed to
Nancy already like home.

Even now, however, Mr. Rogers would not talk terms. He drove them
about again, passing other houses, all happily and prosperously
occupied. He told Nancy about this family and that.

"What'd that house cost?" Bert would demand.

"Ah well, THAT. That belongs to Ingram, of the Ingram Thorn Coal
people, you know. I suppose Mr. Ingram has invested forty or fifty
thousand dollars in that place, in one way and another. The tennis
court--"

And so on and on. Presently they passed the pretty, unpretentious
club-house, built close to the water. A few light sails were
dipping and shaking on the bay, children were gathered in a little
knot beside an upturned canoe, on the shore. Several cars were
parked on the drive outside the club, and Nancy felt decidedly
self-conscious as she and Bert and the children walked onto the
awninged porch that was the tea room.

"Now this club belongs to the place," Mr. Rogers said, "You're
buying here--and I don't mind telling you, Mr. Bradley, that I
want you to buy here," he broke off to admit persuasively--
"because you and your wife are the sort of people we need here.
You won't find anything anywhere that is backed by the same
interest, you won't. However, about the club. Your buying here
makes you a member of this club----"

"Oh, is that SO!" Nancy exclaimed, in delighted surprise.

"Oh, yes," said the agent. "The dues are merely nominal--for the
upkeep of the place."

"Of course!" said the Bradleys.

"Your dues entitle you to all the privileges of the club--I
believe the bathhouses are a little extra, but everything else is
yours. You can bring a friend here to tea, give a card party here-
-there are dances and dinners all winter long."

"Mother, are we coming here to live?" asked Junior, over his
chocolate.

"I don't know," Nancy answered, feeling that she could cry with
nervousness. She hardly tasted her tea, she hardly saw the men and
women that drifted to and fro. Her heart was choking her with hope
and fear, and she knew that Bert was nervous, too.

At last Mr. Rogers returned to the subject of "Holly Court," he
wanted to know first what they thought of it. Oh, it was perfect,
said Nancy and Bert together. It was just what they wanted, only--

Good, the agent said. He went on to say that he would have bought
the house himself, but that his wife's father had an old home in
Flushing, and while the old gentleman lived, he wanted them there.
But he belonged to the Marlborough Gardens Club, and kept a boat
there. Now, he had been authorized to put a special price on this
place of Lansings, and he was going to tell them frankly why. They
knew as well as he did that a hundred foot square plot, and trees
like that, so near the water, COST MONEY. He digressed to tell
them just how property had soared in price, during even his own
time.

"The truth is," he said, "that Lansing, when he picked that site,
picked it for trees, and quiet, and view--it didn't make any
difference to him that it was a corner site, and a little out of
the main traffic----"

"But I LIKE that about it!" Nancy said eagerly. "I love the
isolation and the quiet. Nobody will bother us there----"

Bert saw that she was already moving in. He turned a rather
anxious look from her to the agent.




Chapter Seventeen


Twenty-five thousand. It was out at last, falling like a stone on
the Bradleys' hearts. Nancy could hardly keep the bitter tears
from her eyes. Bert, more hardy, barked out a short laugh. "I'm a
fool to let it go," said the agent frankly; "I'm all tied up with
other things. But I have no hesitation in saying this; you buy it,
put the garden in shape, sit tight for a few years, and I'll turn
it over for you for forty thousand, and throw in my commission!"

"Nix!" said Bert, honestly, "Nothing stirring! It's too big a
proposition for us, we couldn't swing it. It may be all you say,
but I'm raising a family; I can't go into twenty-five-thousand-
dollar deals--"

"I don't see why--" began the agent, unruffled.

"I do!" Bert interrupted him, cheerfully.

"Now look here, Mr. Bradley," said Mr. Rogers, patiently. "Let's
get the real dope on this thing. You want a home. You don't want a
contract-made, cheaply constructed place in some community that
your wife and children will outgrow before they're five years
older! Now, here you get a place that every year is going to
improve. There isn't so much of this Sound shore that is lying
around waiting to be bought. I can show you----"

"Nothing stirring, I tell you!" Bert repeated, "Don't hand me out
a lot of dope about it. I can see for myself what it is, I like
it, the Missus likes it, it's a dandy proposition--for a
millionaire. But I couldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole!"

Nancy's lip began to tremble. She was tired, and somehow--somehow
it all seemed such a waste, if they weren't to have it! She busied
herself untying Anne's napkin, and sent the three children on a
gingerly tour of inspection down to the beach.

"Now listen a moment!" Mr. Rogers said. And Nancy added gently,
almost tremulously:

"Do just LISTEN to him, Bert!"

"You pay rent, don't you?" began Mr. Rogers, "Sixty, you said?
That's seven hundred and twenty dollars a year, and you have
nothing to show for it! But you'd consider seventy-five or a
hundred cheap enough for a place like this wouldn't you?"

"I could go--a hundred, yes," Bert admitted, clearing his throat.

"You don't HAVE to go any hundred," the agent said, triumphantly.
"And besides that, isn't it to your advantage to live in your own
house, and have a home that you can be proud of, and pay
everything over your interest toward your mortgage? We have people
here who only paid two or three thousand down, we don't push you--
that isn't our idea. If you can't meet our terms, we'll meet
yours. You've got your nest-egg, whatever it is----"

"As a matter of fact, I've got ten thousand to start with," Bert
said slowly. "But that's all I have got, Rogers," he added firmly,
"And I don't propose----"

"You've GOT ten thousand?" asked the agent, with a kindly smile.
And immediately his vehemence gave way to a sort of benign
amusement. "Why, my dear boy," he said genially, "What's the
matter with you? There's a mortgage of twelve thousand on that
place now; you pay your ten, and 6 per cent, on the rest--that's
something a little more than sixty dollars a month--and then you
clear off your loan, or not, as suits you! I don't have to tell
you that that's good business. How much of the holdings of
Pearsall and Pearsall are clear of mortgages! We carry 'em on
every inch of our land, right to the hilt too. If you're getting
the equivalent of 8 or 9 per cent, on your money, you should worry
about the man that carries the loan. You're paying 6 per cent, on
somebody's twelve thousand now, don't forget that..."




Chapter Eighteen


An hour later they went to see Holly Court again. It was even
lovelier than ever in the sweet spring twilight. Triangles of soft
light lay upon its dusty, yet polished, floors. Bert said that the
place certainly needed precious little furniture; Nancy added
eagerly that one maid could do all the work. She drew a happy
sketch of Bert and his friends, arriving hot and weary from the
city, on summer afternoons, going down to the bay for a plunge,
and coming back to find supper spread on the red-tiled porch. Bert
liked the idea of winter fires, with snow and darkness outside and
firelight and warmth within, and the Bradleys' friends driving up
jolly and cold for an hour's talk, and a cup of tea.

"What do you think, dear?" said Bert to his wife, very low, when
the agent had considerately withdrawn for a few minutes, and they
could confer. "Think!" repeated Nancy, in delicate reproach, "Why,
I suppose there is only one thing to think, Bert!"

"You--you like it, then?" he asked, a little nervously. "Of
course, it's a corking place, and all that. And, as Rogers says,
with what we have we could swing it easily. You see dear, I pay
ten thousand, and take up twelve thousand more as a mortgage. Even
then there's three thousand--"

Nancy looked despair.

"But that could be covered by a second mortgage," he reminded her,
quickly. "That's a very ordinary thing. Everyone does that. Rogers
will fix it up for me."

"Really, Bert?" she asked doubtfully.

"Oh, certainly! We do it every day, in the office. However, we've
got to think this thing over seriously. It's twice--in fact, it's
more than twice what we said. There's the interest on the
mortgage, and the cost of the move, and my commutation, and club
dues. Then of course, living's a little higher--there are no
shops, just telephone service, the shops are in the village."

"But think of car fares--and how simply the children can dress"
Nancy countered quickly. "And if they have all outdoors to play
in, why, I could let Anna go, and just send out the laundry!"

"Well, we could think it over----" Bert began uncomfortably, but
she cut him short. They had been standing beside one of the
windows, and looking out at the soft twilight under the trees; now
Nancy turned to her husband a pale, tense face, and rather bright
eyes.

"Albert," said she, quickly and breathlessly, "if I could have a
home like this I'd manage somehow! You've been saying we could
have a nurse to help with the children--but I'd have one servant
all my life--I'd do my own work! To have our friends down here--to
have the children grow up in these surroundings--to have that club
to go to--! We're not building for this year, or next year, dear.
We've got the children's future to think of. Mind, I'm not trying
to influence you, Bert," said Nancy, her eager tone changing
suddenly to a flat, repressed voice, "You are the best judge, of
course, and whatever you decide will be right. But I merely think
that this is the loveliest place I ever saw in my life, and
exactly what we've been hunting for--only far, far nicer!--and
that if we can't have it we'd simply better give up house-hunting,
because it's a mere waste of time, and resign ourselves to living
in that detestable city for ever and ever! Of course to go on as
we are going on, means no friends and no real home life for the
children, everyone admits that the city is NO PLACE FOR CHILDREN,
and another thing, we'll never find anything like this again! But
you do as you think best. Only I--that's what I feel, if you ask
me."

And having talked the colour into her cheeks, and the tears into
her eyes, Nancy turned her back upon her husband, and looked out
into the garden again.




Chapter Nineteen


That same week Bert brought home the deeds, and put them down on
the dinner table before her. Nancy usually started the meal
promptly at half past six, so that the children's first raging
appetites might be partly assuaged; bread was buttered, milk
poured, bibs tied, and all the excitement of commencing the meal
abated when Bert came in. It was far from being the ideal
arrangement, both parents admitted that, but like a great many
other abridgements and changes in the domestic routine, it worked.
The rule was that no one was to interrupt Dad until he had talked
a little to Mother, and had his soup, and this worked well, too.
It was while the soup-plates were going out that Bert usually
lifted his daughter bodily into his arms, and paid some little
attention to his sons.

But to-night he came rushing in like a boy, and the instant Nancy
saw the cause of his excitement, she was up from her place, and as
wild with pleasure as a girl. The deeds! The actual title to Holly
Court! Then it was all right? It was all right! It was theirs.
Nancy showed the stamped and ruled and folded paper to the
children. Oh, she had been so much afraid that something would go
wrong. She had been so worried.

Nothing else was talked of that night, or for many days and
nights. Bert said that they might as well move at once, no use
paying rent when you owned a place, and he and Nancy entered into
delightful calculations as to the placing of rugs and tables and
chairs. The things might come out of storage now--wouldn't the
banjo clock and the pineapple bed look wonderful in Holly Court!
The children rejoiced in the parental decision to go and see it
again next Sunday, and take lunch this time, and be all by
themselves, and really get to know the place.

Curiously, neither Nancy nor Bert could distinctly remember
anything but its most obvious features, now. Just how the stairs
came down into the pantry, and how the doors into the bedrooms
opened, they were unable to remember. But it was perfection, they
remembered that.

And on Sunday, as eager as the children, they went down to
Marlborough Gardens again, to find it all lovelier and better than
their memory of it. After that they went every Sunday until they
moved, and Holly Court seemed to grow better and better. The
school and county taxes were already paid, and the receipts given
him, and there was no rent! Husband and wife, eyeing the dignified
disposition of the furniture, the white crib in the big dressing
room next to their own, the boys' narrow beds separated by strips
of rug and neat little dressers, the spare room with the pineapple
bed, and the blue scarfs lettered "Perugia--Perugia--Perugia"--
looked into each other's eyes and said that they had done well.




Chapter Twenty


The rest of that summer, and the fall, were like an exquisite
dream. All the Bradleys were well, and happier than their happiest
dream. Nancy took the children swimming daily on the quiet,
deserted beach just above the club grounds; on Saturdays and
Sundays they all went swimming. She made her own bed every
morning, and the children's beds, and she dusted the beautiful
drawing room, and set the upper half of the Dutch door at a dozen
angles, trying to decide which was the prettiest. She and Anne
made a little ceremony of filling the vases with flowers, and the
boys were obliged to keep the brick paths and the lawn clear of
toys.

Nancy made a quiet boast in those days that they let the
neighbours alone, and the neighbours let them alone. But she did
meet one or two of the Marlborough Beach women, and liked them.
And three times during the summer she and Bert asked city friends
to visit them; times of pride and pleasure for the Bradleys. Their
obvious prosperity, their handsome children, and the ideal home
could not but send everyone away admiring. It was after the last
of these visits that Bert told his wife that they ought to join
the club.

"I don't quite understand that--don't we belong?" Nancy asked.

"The Club belongs to all the owners of Marlborough Beach," Bert
explained. "But--but I feel a little awkward about butting in
there. However, now that this fellow Biggerstaff, that I meet so
much in the train, seems to be so well inclined, suppose you and I
dress up and wander over there for tea, on Sunday? We'll leave the
kids here, and just try it."

Nancy somewhat reluctantly consented to the plan, observing that
she didn't want to do the wrong thing. But it proved the right
thing, for not only did the friendly Biggerstaff come over to the
Bradleys tea-table, but he brought pretty Mrs. Biggerstaff, and
left her with the new-comers while he went off to find other men
and women to introduce. The Bradleys met the Roses, and the Seward
Smiths and gray-haired Mrs. Underhill, with her son, and his
motherless boys--the hour was confused, but heart-warming. When
the Bradleys went home in the Roses' car, they felt that they had
been honestly welcomed to Marlborough Gardens. Nancy was so
excited that she did not want any supper; she sat with Anne in her
lap chattering about the social possibilities opening before her.

"Rose tells me that the club dues are fifty a year," Bert said,
"and some of the bathhouses are five, and the others twenty each.
The twenties are dandies--twelve feet square, with gratings, and
wooden hooks, and lots of space. However, we don't have to decide
that until next year. Of course you sign for teas and all that but
the cards and card-tables and so on, are supplied by the club, and
the tennis courts and lockers and so on, are absolutely free."

"Isn't that wonderful?" Nancy said.

"Well, Rose said they weren't trying to make anything out of it--
it's a family club, and it's here for the general convenience of
the Gardens. Now, for instance, if a fellow from outside joins, he
pays one hundred and fifty initiation fee, and seventy-five a
year."

"H'm!" said Nancy, in satisfaction. The Marlborough Gardens Yacht
Club was not for the masses. "All we need for the children is a
five-dollar bath house," she added presently, "For we're so near
that it's really easier for you and me to walk over in our bathing
suits."

"Oh, sure!" Bert agreed easily. "Unless, of course," he added
after a pause, "all the other fellows do something else."

"Oh of course!" agreed Nancy, little dreaming that she and her
husband were in these words voicing the new creed that was to be
theirs.




Chapter Twenty-one


Up to this time it might have been said that the Bradleys had
grasped their destiny, and controlled it with a high hand. Now
their destiny grasped them, and they became its helpless prey.
Neither Nancy nor Bert was at all conscious of this; in deciding
to do just what all the other persons at the Gardens did, they
merely felt that they were accepted, that they were a part at last
of this wholly fascinating and desirable group.

At first it meant only that they went to the fortnightly dinner at
the club, and danced, on alternate Saturday nights. Nancy danced
exquisitely, even after her ten busy and tiring years, and Bert
was always proud of her when he saw her dancing. The dances broke
up very late; the Bradleys were reproached for going home at two
o'clock. They both usually felt a little tired and jaded the next
day, and not quite so ready to tramp with the children, or
superintend brush fires or snow-shovelling as had once been their
happy fashion.

But they were fresh and eager at four o'clock when Marlborough
Gardens came in for tea by the fire, or when the telephone
summoned them to some other fireside for tea. It rarely was tea;
Nancy wondered that even the women did not care for tea. They
sometimes drank it, and crunched cinnamon toast, after card
parties, but on Saturdays and Sundays, when men were in the group,
stronger drinks were the fashion, cocktails and highballs, or a
bowl of punch. The Bradleys were charming people, Marlborough
Gardens decided warm-heartedly; they had watched the pretty new-
comer and her splashing, sturdy children, all through the first
quiet summer--the children indeed, were all good friends already.
The grown-ups followed suit,

Motor-cars began to come down the short lane that ended at the
gate of Holly Court, and joyous and chattering men and women to
come in to tea. Nancy loved this, and to see a group of men
standing about his blazing logs filled Bert's heart with pride. It
was rather demoralizing in a domestic sense, dinner was delayed,
and their bedtime consequently delayed, and Dora, the cook was
disgruntled at seven o'clock, when it was still impossible to set
the dinner table. But Nancy, rather than disturb her guests, got a
second servant, an enormous Irishwoman named Agnes, who carried
the children off quietly for a supper in the kitchen, when tea-
time callers came, and managed them far more easily than their
mother could.

Before the second summer came Nancy had come to be ashamed of some
of her economies that first summer. Taking the children informally
across the back of the empty Somers' place, and letting them bathe
on the deserted beach next to the club, wearing faded cottons, and
picknicking as near as the Half Mile Light, seemed rather shabby
performances. These things had seemed luxury a year ago, but she
wondered now how she could have done them. Sometimes she reminded
Bert of the much older times, of the oyster party and the hat-
pins, or the terrible summer at The Old Hill House, but she never
spoke of them above her breath.

On the contrary, she had to watch carefully not to inadvertently
admit to Marlborough Gardens that the financial standing of the
Bradleys was not quite all the heart might have desired. Nancy had
no particular sense of shame in the matter, she would have really
enjoyed discussing finances with these new friends. But money, as
money, was never mentioned. It flowed in a mysterious, and
apparently inexhaustible stream through the hands of these young
men and women, and while many of them knew acute anxiety
concerning it, it was not the correct thing to speak of it. They
had various reasons for doing, or not doing, various things. But
money never influenced them. Oliver Rose kept a boat, kept a car
and gave up his boat, took to golf and said he might sell his big
car--but he seemed to be wasting, rather than saving, money, by
these casual transfers. Mrs. Seward Smith said that her husband
wanted her to go into town for the winter, but that it was a bore,
and she hated big hotels. Mrs. Biggerstaff suggested lazily that
they all wait until February and then go to Bermuda, and although
they did not go, Nancy never heard anyone say that the holiday was
too expensive. Everybody always had gowns and maids and dinners
enough; there was no particular display. Old Mrs. Underhill indeed
dressed with the quaint simplicity of a Quaker, and even gay
little Mrs. Fielding, who had been divorced, and was a daughter of
the railroad king, Lowell Lang, said that she hated Newport and
Easthampton because the women dressed so much. She dressed more
beautifully than any other women at Marlborough Gardens, but was
quite unostentatious and informal.

Nancy's cheeks burned when she remembered something she had
innocently said to Mrs. Fielding, in the early days of their
acquaintance. The fare to the city was seventy cents, and Nancy
commented with a sort of laughing protest upon the quickness with
which her mileage books were exhausted, between the boys' dentist
appointments, shopping trips, the trips twice a month that helped
to keep Agnes and Dora happy, and the occasional dinner and
theatre party she herself had with Bert.

"Besides that," she smiled ruefully, "There's the cab fare to the
station, that wretched Kilroy charges fifty cents each way, even
for Anne, and double after ten o'clock at night, so that it almost
pays Mr. Bradley and myself to stay in town!"

"I never go in the train, I don't believe I've ever made the trip
that way," said Mrs. Fielding pleasantly. And immediately she
added, "Thorn has nothing to do, and it saves me any amount of
fatigue, having him follow me about!"

"But what do you do with the car, if you stay in for the theatre?"
Nancy asked, a day or two later, after she and Bert had made some
calculations as to the expense of this.

"Oh, Thorn leaves it in some garage, there are lots of them. And
he gets his dinner somewhere, and goes to a show himself, I
suppose!" Mrs. Fielding said. Nancy made no answer, but when she
and Bert were next held on a Fifth Avenue crossing, she spoke of
it again. Hundreds of men and women younger than Nancy and Bert
were sitting in that river of motor-cars--how easily for granted
they seemed to feel them!

"Just as I am beginning to take my lovely husband and children,
and my beautiful home for granted," Nancy said sensibly, giving
herself a little shake. "We have too much now, and here I am
wondering what it would be like to have a motor-car!"

And the next day she spoke carelessly at the club of the smaller
bathhouses.

"This is a wonderful bath house of yours, Mrs. Ingram; but aren't
there smaller ones?"

Mrs. Ingram, a distinguished-looking, plain woman of forty, with
the pleasantest smile in the world, turned quickly from the big
dressing room she had just engaged, and was inspecting.

"Yes, there are, Mrs. Bradley, they're in that little green row,
right against the wall of the garages. We had to have them, you
know, for the children, and a bachelor or two, who couldn't use a
big one, and then of course the maids love to go in, in the
mornings--my boys used one until last year, preferred it!"

And she smiled at the two tall boys in crumpled linen, who were
testing the pegs and investigating the advantages of the room.
Nancy had meant to be firm about that bathhouse, but she did not
feel quite equal to it at this moment. She allowed her fancy to
play for one delightful minute with the thought of a big dressing
room; the one right next to Mrs. Ingram's, with the green awning!

"But twenty dollars a season is an outrageous rent for a
bathhouse!" she said to Bert that night.

"Oh, I don't know," he said comfortably, "We've got the money. It
amounts only to about five dollars a month, after all. I vote for
the big one."

"Well, of course it'll be just the most glorious luxury that ever
WAS," Nancy agreed happily. She loved the water, and Bert enjoyed
nothing so much in the world as an hour's swimming with the
children, but before that second summer was over they could not
but see that their enthusiasm was unshared by the majority of
their neighbours. The children all went in daily, at the
stillwater, and the few young girls Marlborough Gardens boasted
also went in, on Sundays, in marvellous costumes. At these times
there was much picturesque grouping on the pier, and the float,
and much low conversation between isolated couples, while flying
soft hair was drying. Also the men of all ages went in, for
perhaps ten minutes brisk overhand exercise, and came gasping out
for showers and rough towelling.

But Nancy's women friends did not care for sea-bathing, and she
came to feel that there was something just a trifle provincial in
the open joyousness with which the five Bradleys gathered for
their Sunday riot. If there was a morning tide they were
comparatively unnoticed, although there were always a few boats
going out, and few men on the tennis courts. But when the tide was
high in the afternoon, even Bert admitted that it was "darned
conspicuous" for the family to file across the vision of the women
who were playing bridge on the porch, and for Anne to shriek over
her water-wings and the boys to yell, as they inevitably did yell,
"Gee--it's cold!"

Their real reason for more or less abandoning the habit was that
there was so much else to do. Bert played golf, Nancy learned to
score tennis as she watched it, and to avoid applause for errors,
and to play excellent bridge for quarter-cent points. She went to
two or three luncheons sometimes in a single week; and cold Sunday
lunches, with much passing of beer and sharing of plates, were
popular at Marlborough Gardens. Holly Court was especially suited
to this sort of hospitality, and it was an easy sort to extend.
Nancy sent the children off with Agnes, bribed her cook, bribed
the laundress to wash all the table linen twice weekly, and on
special occasions employed a large, efficient Swedish woman from
the village for a day, or a week-end. "I'll get Christiana," was
one of the phrases that fell frequently from Nancy's lips.




Chapter Twenty-two


Miraculously, finances stood the strain. Bert was doing well, and
sometimes made several good commissions together--not as large as
the famous commission, but still important. Neither he nor Nancy
kept accounts any more, bills were paid as they came in, and money
was put into the bank as it came in. Nancy had a check book, but
she rarely used it. Sometimes, when Mrs. Biggerstaff or Mrs.
Underhill asked her to join a Girls' Home Society or demanded a
prize for the Charity Bridge, Nancy liked to show herself ready to
help, but for other purposes she needed no money. She ordered all
household goods by telephone, signed "chits" at the club, kept her
bridge winnings loose in a small enamelled box, ready for losing,
and, when she went into town, charged on her accounts right and
left, and met Bert for luncheon. So that, when they really had
their first serious talk about money, Nancy was able to say with a
quite plausible air of innocence, "Well, Bert, I haven't asked you
for one cent since the day I needed mileage. I don't WASTE money!
I never DID."

"Well, we've got it!" Bert said uncomfortably, on the day of this
talk. He had vaguely hoped, as the month went by, that it was
going to show him well ahead financially. However, if things
"broke even," he might well congratulate himself. Certainly they
were having a glorious time, there was no denying that.

"Do you recognize us, Bert?" Nancy sometimes asked him exultingly,
as she tucked herself joyously into somebody's big tonneau, or
snatched open a bureau drawer to find fresh prettiness for some
unexpected outing. "Do you remember our wanting to join the Silver
River Country Club! That little club!"

"Gosh, it's queer!" Bert would agree, grinning. And late in the
second summer he said, "If I put the Buller deal over, I think
I'll get a car!"

"Well, honestly, I think we ought to have a car," Nancy said
seriously, after a flashing look of delight, "It isn't an
extravagance at all, Bert, if you really figure it out. The man
does errands for you, saves you I don't know how much cab fare,
takes care of the place, and Mary Ingram's man has a garbage
incinerator--and saves that expense! Then, it's one of the things
you truly ought to have, down here. You have friends down
Saturday, you play golf, you play bridge after dinner--well and
good. Sunday morning we swim, and come home to lunch, and then
what? You can't ask other friends in to lunch and then propose
that they take us in their cars down the island somewhere? And yet
that's what they do; and I assure you it embarrasses me, over and
over again."

"Oh, we'll have to have a car--I'm glad you see it," said Bert.

The Buller deal being duly completed, they got their car. The
picturesque garage was no longer useless. A silent, wizened little
Frenchman and his wife took possession of the big room over the
kitchen, Pierre to manage the garden and the car, Pauline to cook-
-she was a marvellous cook. Nancy kept Agnes, and got a little
maid besides, who was to make herself generally useful in dining
room and bedrooms.

The new arrangement worked like a charm. There was no woman in the
Gardens who did not envy the Bradleys their cook, and Nancy felt
the possession of Pauline a real feather in her cap. Pauline
exulted in emergencies, and Nancy and Bert experienced a fearful
delight when they put her to the test, and sat bewildered at their
own table, while the dainty courses followed one another from some
mysterious source to which Pauline alone held the clue,

The children were somewhat in the background now, but they seemed
well cared for, and contented enough when they made their
occasional appearances before their mother's friends. There was a
fine private school in the Gardens, and although the fees for the
two boys, with music lessons twice weekly, came to thirty dollars
a month, Nancy paid it without self-reproach. The alternative was
to send them into the village public school, which was attended by
not one single child from the Gardens. The Ingram boys went away
to boarding school at Pomfret, Dorothy Rose boarded in New York,
and the Underbill boys had a tutor, who also had charge of one or
two other boys preparing for college preparatory schools. While
the boys were away Anne drifted about with her mother, or more
often with Agnes, or was allowed to go to play with Cynthia
Biggerstaff or Harriett Fielding.




Chapter Twenty-three


Life spun on. The Bradleys felt that they had never really lived
before. They rushed, laughed, played cards, dressed, danced, and
sat at delicious meals from morning until night. There were so
many delightful plans continually waiting, that sometimes it was
hard to choose between them. The Fieldings wanted them to dine, to
meet friends from Chicago--but that was the same night that the
Roses and Joe Underhill were going in to see the new musical
comedy--

"This is Bert--" a voice at Nancy's telephone would say, in the
middle of a sweet October morning, "Nance...Tom Ingram picked me
up, and brought me in...and he was saying that Mrs. Ingram has to
come into town this afternoon...and that, since you do, why don't
you have Pierre bring you both in in the car, and meet us after
your shopping, and have a little dinner somewhere and take in a
show? You can let Pierre go back, do you see? ... and the Ingrams
will bring us back in their car. Now, can you get hold of Mrs.
Ingram, and fix it up, and telephone me later? ..."

Nancy's first thought, so strong is habit, might be that she had
just secured ducks for dinner, Bert's favourite dinner, and that
she had promised Anne to take her with her brothers to see the big
cows and prize sheep at the Mineola Fair. But that could wait, and
if Anne and the boys were promised a little party, and ice cream--
and if Pauline had no dinner to get she would readily make the ice
cream--

"Ingram is here... he wants to know what you think..." Bert's
impatient voice might say. And Nancy felt that she had no choice
but to respond:

"That will be lovely, Bert! I'll get hold of Mrs. Ingram right
away. And I'll positively telephone you in fifteen minutes."

The rest of the day would be rush and excitement, Nancy felt that
she never would grow used to the delicious idleness of it all.
During the week there were evenings that might have been as quiet
as the old evenings, nothing happened, and if anybody came in it
was only the Fieldings, or Mrs. Underhill and her son, for a game
of bridge. But domestic peace is a habit, after all, and the
Bradleys had lost the habit. Nancy was restless, beside her own
hearth, even while she spangled a gown for the Hallowe'en ball,
and discussed with Bert the details of the paper chase at the
club, and the hunt breakfast to follow. She would ask Bert what
the others were doing to-night, and would spring up full of eager
anticipation when the inevitable rap of the brass knocker came.

Saturdays and Sundays were almost always a time of complete
absorption. Everyone had company to entertain, everyone had plans.
Nancy and Bert would come gaily into their home, on a Saturday
afternoon, flushed from a luncheon party, and would entertain the
noisy crowd in the dining room. After that the chugging of motors
began again on the drive, and the watching children saw their
parents depart in a trail of gay laughter.




Chapter Twenty-four


There was a brief halt when a fourth child, Priscilla, was born.
It was in the quiet days that followed Priscilla's birth, that the
Bradleys began to look certain unpleasant facts squarely in the
face. They were running steadily deeper and deeper into debt.
There were no sensational expenditures, but there were odd bills
left unpaid, from midsummer, from early fall, from Christmas.

"And I don't see where we can cut down," said Bert, gloomily.

It was dusk of a bitter winter day. Nancy was lying on a wide
couch beside her bedroom fire, Priscilla snuffled in a bassinet
near by. In a lighted room adjoining, a nurse was washing bottles.
The coming of the second daughter had somehow brought husband and
wife nearer together than they had been for a long time, even now
Nancy had been wrapped in peaceful thought; this was like the old
times, when she had been tired and weak, and Bert had sat and
talked about things, beside her! She brought her mind resolutely
to bear upon all the distasteful suggestions contained in his
involuntary remark.

"What specially worries you, Bert?" she asked.

He turned to her in quick gratitude for her sympathy.

"Nothing special, dear. We just get in deeper and deeper, that's
all. The table, and the servants, and the car, and your bill at
Landmann's--nothing stays within any limit any more! I don't know
where we stand, half the time. It's not that!" He pulled at his
pipe for a moment in silence. "It's not that!" he burst out, "but
I don't think we get much out of it!"

Nancy glanced at him quickly, and then stared into the fire for a
moment of silence. Then she said in a low tone:

"I don't believe we do!"

"I like Biggerstaff--and I like Rose and Fielding well enough!"
Bert added presently, after profound thought, "but I don't like
'em all day and all night! I don't like this business of framing
something up every Sunday--a lot of fur coats and robes, and all
of us getting out half-frozen to eat dinners we don't want, all
over the place--"

"And hours and hours of making talk with women I really don't care
about, for me!" Nancy said. "I love Mary Ingram," she said
presently, "and the Biggerstaffs. But that's about all."