But there were times that evening when it seemed to me that we were of one family, the Radigans, the Williegilts, all of us; that we had lived together all our lives and were to spend eternity in company. It began at seven o'clock, very informally, and when I entered the drawing-room the very last, prepared to besiege Miss Bumpschus, I had suddenly impressed on me a profound respect for the art of photography. She seemed to have aged since Sunday, and though she slipped her arm through mine and worked her way with me through a maze of chairs and tables to the dining-room, I felt that, after all, Mrs. Radigan had taken me in. Miss Bumpschus is very smart. Besides, she is intellectual. The Bumpschuses have been prominent in New York society for fifty years; one of her cousins married the Duke of Nothingham, and she is herself rated at some ten millions. So, really, Mrs. Radigan was doing me a favor and giving me what she called an opportunity. Then if I wanted to rest my eyes I could gaze on the lovely Miss Veal across the table, smiling at Willie Lite, and saying, "Indeed." Miss Bumpschus, I found, was religious. To her the world was peopled with only two sets of people worth knowing--the very rich and the very poor. She would cut one of the Rollers Club fellows dead in the street, but she would, with her own hands, bake a cake for one of those dear old friends of hers at the Home for Aged Elevated Ticket-choppers. If she had not been born just what she was, the heiress to the great Bumpschus fortune, she would far rather have been a nurse than a person merely well-to-do. But she was an accomplished talker, and though I cannot remember a thing she said, she left none of those dreadful pauses. For this I was grateful, anyway, as I could not break in on Mrs. Williegilt's engrossing discussion of glanders and carbureters with Radigan, nor on Mrs. Radigan's sermon on carbureters and glanders to Bobbie Williegilt; nor could I turn from Willie Lite the smile of Miss Veal. Anyway, whatever I said and whatever she said, Mrs. Radigan whispered in my ear as we were going down the steps to the wagon that I had won Miss Bumpschus's heart, and that if I would complete the conquest I must send my old dress-clothes and top hats to the aged ticket-choppers.