"Don’t forget our young feminist over there," cried Lydia, indicating Janet. "Don’t forget her, or her heroic gesture against wedlock!" "A bark is not as good as a bite," retorted Janet. "But isn’t it better than a tame crawl into the yoke?" By way of reply, Lydia half raised herself from the tiger skin and, in measured tones, recited: "O Dewdrop, thou hast fought the better fight—in vain! Some women are born to be wedlocked, some achieve wedlock, and some have wedlock thrust upon them. Janet belongs to the first group, Charlotte belongs to the second, I belong to the third." "You to the third!" cried Charlotte. "How do you make that out? From all I see, though Charley Morrow is a perfect dragon of jealousy, you cling to him pretty tightly." "I have to, Charlotte! I have to keep him in countenance (and in pocket money, too!), because I’m afflicted with what the doctors call ’a floating stomach.’ Now, Charley is not only the best housekeeper in New York, he’s the best cook, too. There’s simply nobody else whom I can depend on not to sneak lard instead of butter into my bread—" "Or to mix cottonseed oil instead of olive oil with your salads?" thrust in Pryor. "Precisely. Sometimes, when I eat at home I say: How can I stand Charley another twenty-four hours? Next day I eat at a restaurant, and say: I can stand Charley forever!" They all laughed, and Lydia buried herself in the rug again. "All the same," she went on meditatively, "I’ve never really got used to marriage. It’s a well of never-ending surprises." "What about _my_ surprise?" asked Janet, for the fourth time. The bell rang and Charlotte went to the door a few feet away. "Here it comes!" announced Pryor, as a man entered. "Janet!" "Robert!" Greetings all round cut their glances short. *V* Janet was struck with the fact that he had never looked better. Robert, as dynamic as a battery giving out blue sparks, was familiar enough to her. But Robert, with a deepening pink spreading over his pale cheeks, and with a suit that showed the craftsmanship of a fashionable Fifth Avenue tailor, was a sight to make one gasp and stare. Nor was this all. In times past, she had often conjured up a picture of him poised as on a springboard, preparing to leap upward to join the spirits of the air. But there was nothing aerial about the way in which his feet now gripped the solid ground. She couldn’t get over the change! When he alluded briefly to a trip to California from which he had just returned and on which he appeared to have done some work for the Confederated Press, she had the sensation of not being in a secret that all the rest shared. This was the sort of discourtesy that had hitherto been taboo in Charlotte’s crowd, and she resented being made a victim of it. "Then the Confederated Press knew better than to give you your walking papers?" drawled Lydia.