“A bride who doesn't see her duty, should be _made_ to see it,” declared Mrs. Sequin to Mrs. Ivy in her most impressive manner. “Something is naturally expected of the wife of John Jay Queerington. I told her expressly that Friday was her day, I even telephoned to remind her, and here it is four o'clock, and people beginning to come, and she off playing tennis!” They were waiting in the twilight of the Queerington parlor, that plain, stiff, old maid of a parlor that had sprung completely furnished from the brain of a decorator some two decades before and never blinked an eyelid since. It was a room with which no one had ever taken liberties. Hattie had once petulantly remarked that her father would as soon have moved a tooth from his lower to his upper jaw, as to have moved an ornament or picture from the parlor to the second floor. Mrs. Ivy, the lady addressed, smiled tolerantly. It was one of Mrs. Ivy's most irritating characteristics that she was always tolerant of other people's annoyances. She was blond and plump, and wore a modified toga and a crystallized smile. “Ah! Mrs. Sequin,” she purred, “our little bride is a child of Nature. Sweetness and light! We must not expect too much of her at first. My Gerald says she's like a wild little waterfall dancing in the sun, undammed by conventions. Gerald phrases things so perfectly.” “Well, I've had enough of trying to manage a waterfall!” Mrs. Sequin said grimly. “Cousin John asked me to take her in hand, and I must say I am finding her difficult. Perfectly sweet and good natured, you know, but she goes right on her own way. She has decided that she likes Connie's friends better than the Doctor's, that her hair doesn't feel right arranged the way it should be, that she isn't going to wear dresses made by fashionable dressmakers because they are uncomfortable. She actually told me she liked to be a few minutes out of style!” “But isn't she right?” murmured Mrs. Ivy. “God has given her a graceful, symmetrical body, shouldn't she clothe it in flowing robes that do not confine or--” “For Heaven's sake, Mrs. Ivy, don't you dare start her on dress reform! Her one chance for social success is her beauty. She simply terrifies me the way she says right out the first thing that comes into her mind. It will take me months to teach her the first lesson in society, that the most immodest thing in the world is the naked truth.” “What I hope to rouse in the dear girl,” said Mrs. Ivy with a superior smile, “is a sense of responsibility toward her fellowmen. I have already proposed her name for the Anti-Tobacco League and Miss Snell, our corresponding secretary of the Foreign Missionary Society, has promised to meet me here at five. It is these young, ardent souls that must take up the banner of reform when it drops from the hands of us veterans.” “Well,” said Mrs. Sequin, turning a handsome, bored profile to her companion, “I shall never get over the absurdity of the marriage!”