The women were perpetually in street clothes or muffled in satin wraps; Linda only regarded them when they were exceptional. Usually she was intent on the men. It often happened that they returned her frank gaze with a smile, or stopped to converse with her. Sometimes it was an actor with a face dryly pink like a woman's from make-up; they were familiar and pinched her cheeks, calling her endearing names in conscious echoing voices as if they were quite hollow within. Then there were simply business men, who never appeared to take off their derby hats, and spoke to her of their little girls at home. She was entirely at ease with the latter--so many of her mother's friends were similar--and critically valued the details of their dress, the cigar-cases with or without gold corners, the watch-chains with jeweled insignia, the cuff-links and embroidered handkerchiefs. If her mother approached while Linda was so engaged the elder would linger with a faint smile, at which, now, the girl was conscious of a growing impatience. She'd rise with dignity and, if possible, escape with her parent from florid courtesies. This sense of annoyance oppressed her, too, in the dining-room, where her mother, a cocktail in her hand, would engage in long cheerful discussions with the captains or waiters. Other women, Linda observed, spoke with complete indifference and their attention on the _carte de jour_. Of course it was much more friendly to be interested in the servants' affairs--they told her mother about their wives and the number of their children, the difficulties of bringing both ends together, and served her with the promptest care; but instinctively Linda avoided any but the most formal contact. She had to insist, as well, on paying the tips; for Mrs. Condon, her sympathies engaged, was quite apt to leave on the table a five-dollar bill or an indiscriminate heap of silver. “You are a regular little Jew,” she would reply lightly to Linda's protests. This, the latter thought, was unfair; for the only Jew she knew, Mr. Moses Feldt, an acquaintance of their present period in New York, was quite the most generous person she knew. “Certainly you don't take after your mama.” After she said this she always paused with tight lips. It was charged with the assumption that, while Linda didn't resemble her, she did very much a mysterious and unfavorably regarded personage. Her father, probably. More and more Linda wondered about him. He was dead, she knew, but that, she began to see, was no reason for the positive prohibition to mention him at all. Perhaps he had done something dreadful, with money, and had disgraced them all. Yet she was convinced that this was not so.