“Don’t you fret, Godfrey. I know what I’m about. I’ll get what we’ve got to have.” And I’ll concede that she did--also, that I thought it overwhelmingly grand at the time. It was a house in a fashionable side street, between Madison avenue and Fifth--a magnificent house built for exactly such a family as mine. That is, it was built entirely for show and not at all for comfort; it fairly bristled with the luxuries and “modern conveniences,” but most of them were of the sort that looks comfortable but is not. The rent was some preposterous sum--thirty-five or forty thousand a year. We had room enough for the housing of nearly a hundred people, counting servants as people, which I believe is not the custom. It was fitted throughout in the fashion which those clever leeches who think out and sell luxuries have in all ages imposed upon the rich man because it means money in their pockets. Once in a while you find a rich man who has the courage to live as he pleases, but most of them live as the fashion commands. And many of them have no idea that there is any less comfortless and less foolish way to live. You imagine, gentle reader, that people with money live in beauty and comfort. You imagine that you could do it also if you had but the wealth. Believe me, you deceive yourself. Beyond question a certain amount of money is necessary to the getting of attractive and comfortable surroundings. But there is another, an equally indispensable and a far rarer factor. That factor, gentle reader, is intelligence--knowledge of the resources of civilization, knowledge of the realities as to comfort, luxury, and taste. I am tempted to linger upon the details of the extravagance of that first big establishment of Edna’s. It was so astounding and so ridiculous. I saw that she had delivered us and our fortune over to hordes of crafty, thirsty bloodsuckers--merchants, tradesmen, servants. But her heart was set upon it, and all other rich people were living in that same way. “You want to do the right thing by Margot, don’t you?” said she. “By you and Margot,” said I. “Go ahead. I guess I can find the money.” I shan’t here go into the ways I discovered or invented for finding that money. They were not too scrupulous, but neither were they commercially dishonorable. I must smile there. Being of an inquiring and jocose mind I have often tried to find an action that, in the opinion of the most eminent commercial authorities, was absolutely dishonorable. Never yet have I found a single action, however wrong and even criminal in general, that they would not declare in certain circumstances perfectly honorable. And those “certain circumstances” could always be boiled down to the one circumstance--needing the money.