“Oh, thank you!” responded Anita, after a quick, but thorough inspection of Alva's face, to make sure she was like her voice. I had not counted on this; I had been assuming that Anita would not be out of my sight until we were married. It was on the tip of my tongue to interfere when she looked at me--for permission to go! “Don't keep her too long,” said I to Alva, and they were gone. “You can't blame me--really you can't, Mr. Blacklock,” Mrs. Ball began to plead for herself, as soon as they were safely out of hearing. “After some things--mere hints, you understand--for I'm careful what I permit Mr. Ball to say before _me_. I think married people can not be too respectful of each other. I _never_ tolerate _vulgarity_.” “No doubt, Joe has made me out a very vulgar person,” said I, forgetting her lack of humor. “Oh, not at all, not at all, Mr. Blacklock,” she protested, in a panic lest she had done her husband damage with me. “I understand, men will be men, though as a pure-minded woman, I'm sure I can't imagine why they should be.” “How far off is the nearest church?” I cut in. “Only two blocks--that is, the Methodist church,” she replied. “But I know Mr. Ball will bring an Episcopalian.” “Why, I thought you were a devoted Presbyterian,” said I, recalling how in their Brooklyn days she used to insist on Joe's going twice every Sunday to sleep through long sermons. She looked uncomfortable. “I was reared Presbyterian,” she explained confusedly, “but you know how it is in New York. And when we came to live here, we got out of the habit of church-going. And all Alva's little friends were Episcopalians. So I drifted toward that church. I find the service so satisfying--so--elegant. And--one sees there the people one sees socially.” “How is your culture class?” I inquired, deliberately malicious, in my impatience and nervousness. “And do you still take conversation lessons?” She was furiously annoyed. “Oh, those old jokes of Joe's,” she said, affecting disdainful amusement. In fact, they were anything but jokes. On Mondays and Thursdays she used to attend a class for women who, like herself, wished to be “up-to-date on culture and all that sort of thing.” They hired a teacher to cram them with odds and ends about art and politics and the “latest literature, heavy and light.” On Tuesdays and Fridays she had an “indigent gentlewoman,” whatever that may be, come to her to teach her how to converse and otherwise conduct herself according to the “standards of polite society.” Joe used to give imitations of those conversation lessons that raised roars of laughter round the poker table, the louder because so many of the other men had wives with the same ambitions and the same methods of attaining them. Mrs. Ball came back to the subject of Anita.