“No, he has not, that is half the trouble. He has stayed quite too much the same; I only wonder that I could have endured it for the eight months it has lasted. You see, he was perfectly satisfied with himself as he was, and that leaves no room for improvement. Of course everybody knows, at the pace the world’s rolling along, if you don’t go ahead, you slide back! I tend to balk and jump the traces enough myself when it comes to hills, Heaven knows, and if my mate in harness can’t pull true on an up grade, where shall we be at? Dick kept along on the level good naturedly, I’ll say that for him, yet it was because I was my father’s daughter, not because I’m myself. Being a young broker, he thought it a good thing to have a father-in-law with unlimited ‘pointers’ in every wag of his chin (poor chap, he hasn’t yet realized that these things mostly point both ways), and he was serenely content! As for me, I felt as if I should go wild,—no conversation except the eternal money market. I said so,—and more besides! “He was very nice about it,—daddy really seemed relieved,—and—well, it’s all over, though his mother did glower at me at first when I met her on the avenue yesterday, but she decided to bow.” “Oh, Lucy, why are you so impetuous? When you told me of the engagement, you said—” “Now listen, Brooke Lawton, and hear me swear one thing: money in one’s pocket is a blessing, but continually dinned into one’s ears it’s the other thing. If ever I marry any one, he must not be in this sickening money business; he must do something different, if it’s only drawing pictures on the sidewalk with chalk held between his toes, like the armless sailor in Union Square, though, come to think of it, I’d rather he’d have arms! “By the way, why don’t you ’phone your mother to come? It’s going to be an awfully smart party. There’s a ’phone in the writing room or somewhere near—there always is one now at swell functions for the use of guests, and a young man (not a woman—too dangerous) from central to work it; they say the society reporters fight and bribe to get the job, they hear so much ‘inwardness.’ Your mother needn’t worry and stay at home. I don’t think your father’s sick. I heard daddy say last night that he is in another big deal, with trump cards enough to fill both hands, and he’s holding them so close for fear of dropping any that he’s bound to be preoccupied.” “It’s time for us to go; I hear the music,” said Brooke, who had been set thinking by her friend’s talk. “Why not come into the music room for a few numbers and then escape if you wish?” said Lucy, navigating the crowded stairs easily, and pausing on a landing to continue her chatter and glance into the room below. “What, all the chairs taken already? Just look at those orchids, by the dozen, not single, the whole plant hung by gilt chains from the ceiling!