What the devil was getting into the town? Roger frowned his deep dislike. Here was Laura with her chicken's mind blithely taking her sister's thoughts and turning them topsy-turvy, to make for herself a view of life which fitted like a white kid glove her small and elegant "ménage." And although her father had only inklings of it all, he had quite enough to make him irate at this uncanny interplay of influences in his family. Why couldn't the girls leave each other alone? * * * * * Early in the winter, Edith, too, had entered in. It had taken Edith just one glance into the bride's apartment to grasp Laura's whole scheme of existence. "Selfish, indulgent and abnormal," was the way she described it. She and Bruce were dining with Roger that night. "I wash my hands of the whole affair," continued Edith curtly. "So long as she doesn't want my help, as she has plainly made me feel, I certainly shan't stand in her way." "You're absolutely right," said her father. "Stick to it," said Bruce approvingly. But Edith did not stick to it. In her case too, as the weeks wore on, those subtle family ties took hold and made her feel the least she could do was "to keep up appearances." So she and Bruce dined with the bride and groom, and in turn had them to dinner. And these dinners, as Bruce confided to Roger, were occasions no man could forget. "They come only about once a month," he said in a tone of pathos, "but it seems as though barely a week had gone by when Edith says to me again, 'We're dining with Laura and Hal to-night.' Well, and we dine. Young Sloane is not a bad sort of a chap--works hard downtown and worships his wife. The way he lives--well, it isn't mine--and mine isn't his--and we both let it go at that. But the women can't, they haven't it in 'em. Each sits with her way of life in her lap. You can't see it over the tablecloth, but, my God, how you feel it! The worst of it is," he ended, "that after one of these terrible meals each woman is more set than before in her own way of living. Not that I don't like Edith's way," her husband added hastily. Edith also disapproved of the fast increasing publicity which Deborah was getting. "I may be very old-fashioned," she remarked to her father, "but I can't get used to this idea that a woman's place is in headlines. And I think it's rather hard on you--the use she's making of your house." One Friday night when she came to play chess, she found her father in the midst of a boisterous special meeting of his club of Italian boys. It had been postponed from the evening before. And though Roger, overcome with dismay at having forgotten Edith's night, apologized profusely, the time-honored weekly game took place no more from that day on. "Edith's pretty sore," said Bruce, who dropped in soon afterwards. "She says Deborah has made your house into an annex to her school." Roger smoked in silence. His whole family was about his ears.