He picked up the discarded newspaper and seated himself in the buffalo chair. The buffalo chair was a hideous monstrosity whose arms, back, and sides were made of buffalo horns ingeniously put together. Fortunately, their tips curved away from the sitter. The chair had been presented to old Isaac Thrift by some lodge or real estate board or society. It was known to the family as Ole Bull. The women never sat in it and always warned feminine callers away from it. Its horns had a disastrous way with flounces, ruffles, plackets, frills. It was one of those household encumbrances which common sense tells you to cast off at every housecleaning and sentiment bids you retain. Thus far sentiment had triumphed on Prairie Avenue. Once you resigned yourself to him Ole Bull was unexpectedly comfortable. Here Henry Kemp sat reading, smoking, glancing up over the top of his paper at the women folk of his family--at his wife, his daughter, his mother-in-law, thoughtfully through the soothing haze of his cigar. He pondered on many things during these family Friday evenings, did Henry Kemp. And said little. The conversation was the intimate, frank, often brutal talk common to families whose members see each other too often and know one another too well. Belle to Lottie, for example: "Oh, why don't you get something a little different! You've been wearing blue for ten years." "Yes, but it's so practical; and it always looks well." "Cut loose and be impractical for a change. They're going to wear a lot of that fawn colour this spring--sand, I think they call it.... How did Mrs. Hines get along with that old taffeta she made over for you?" "I don't know; it kind of draws across the front, and the sleeves--I have to remember to keep my arms down. I wish you'd look at it." "You'd have to put it on. How can I tell?" "Too much trouble." "Well, then, go on looking frumpy. These home dressmakers!" Lottie did not look frumpy, as a matter of fact. No one with a figure so vigorous and erect, a back so straight, a head so well set on its fine column of a throat, a habit of such fastidious cleanliness of person, could be frumpy. But she resorted to few feminine wiles of clothing, as of speech or manner. Lottie's laces, and silks and fine white garments, like her dear secret thoughts and fancies, were worn hidden, by the world unsuspected. All the dearer to Lottie for that. To-night Belle sat dangling her slipper at the end of her toe, her knees crossed. She had a small slim foot and a trick of shooting her pump loose at the heel so that it hung half on half off as she waggled her foot in its fine silk stocking. Henry Kemp had found it an entrancing trick when first they were married. He found it less fascinating now, after twenty years. Sometimes the slipper dropped--accidentally. "Henry dear, my slipper." Well, even the Prince must have remonstrated with Cinderella if she made a practice of the slipper-dropping business after their marriage. Twenty years after.