“What about their electric cleaner, that’s pretty high-toned? And she had finger bowls, yes, finger bowls when the out-of-town men took dinner there. Ali Baba says they’re going to buy a seven-passenger car—of course it’s nobody’s business and they certainly do a lot of good but they better be careful or they will find themselves so up in G that there would be no living with them ... my Milly says Dan Birge is going to make his clerks wear black dresses with white collars—now did you ever! I guess Lia Fine and Mercedes Rains won’t. Lia just got herself a red alpaca made with white braid—now what does Dan want to go and do such things for?” “I dunno, anybody that wanted to marry Thurley Precore is likely to try ’most anything,” the subject here changing to Thurley and her rumored fame, the great event concerning Abby Clergy’s recovery and adoption of Thurley. So Dan and Lorraine developed a pleasant politeness in their personal relationships as if they had been married a great many years and, perforce, discovered that to be polite was the easiest way to proceed! Nor would it be quite fair to say that, in time, Dan did not become used to his well ordered home and excellent meals, cooked to please himself first and others afterwards, the even-tempered, pretty wife who always smiled when he smiled and who would absent herself whenever she suspected that he wanted to be alone, to rummage in the den in masculine disorder, using a cushion for his feet as well as his head or to go into the pantry in trail of half a pie and ruthlessly crumb the parlor rugs while he ate it, listening to his favorite rag-time roll on the player piano. Dan was unconscious of the heinous offense committed, because no complaint was ever made. So surely as Lorraine knew that Thurley ruled in her husband’s heart, so surely did Dan rule in Lorraine’s heart, and she had schooled herself in ways of becoming essential to his comfort if not to his affections. Dan’s clothes were mended, never a rip nor tear nor missing button was in evidence. If he was late for dinner, “It keeps warm so nicely in that jewel of an oven,” or if he ’phoned at the last moment that he would not be home, the telephone operator, June Myers, was forced to report that Lorraine said as sweetly as if she was being asked to a party, “Oh, surely, Dan, I understand—well, have a good time, won’t you?” “Little mother-drudge” was Ali Baba’s name for her when he and Betsey would argue with Hopeful as to the situation. Hopeful, true to her name, tried to convince herself and every one else that joy reigned in the new house with the iron deer guarding the grass plot, that things were better as they were. But Ali Baba and Betsey gave battle that Thurley was the girl Dan loved and Lorraine was merely making the best of it.