Wheaton stood inside the station and watched the man cross the electric-lighted platform, show his ticket at the gate, and walk to the train. He still waited, watching the car which the man boarded, until the train rolled out into the night. CHAPTER XIV THE GIRL THAT TRIES HARD The Girl That Tries Hard was giving a dance at the Country Club. The Girl That Tries Hard was otherwise Mabel Margrave, wherein lay the only point of difference between herself and other Girls That Try Hard. There was hardly room in Clarkson for cliques; and yet one often heard the expression "Mabel Margrave and her set" and this indicated that Mabel Margrave had a following and that to some extent she was a leader. She prided herself on doing things differently, which is what The Girl That Tries Hard is forever doing everywhere. She was the only girl in the town that gave dinners at the Clarkson Club; and while these functions were not necessarily a shock to the Clarkson moral sense, yet the first of these entertainments, at which Mabel Margrave danced a skirt dance at the end of the dinner, caused talk in conservative circles. It might be assumed that Mabel's father and mother could have checked her exuberance, but the fact was that Mabel's parents wielded little influence in their own household. Timothy Margrave was busy with his railroad and his wife was a timid, shrinking person, who viewed her daughter's social performances with wonder and admiration. It would have been much better for Mabel if she had not tried so hard, but this was something that she did not understand, and there was no one to teach her. She derived an immense pleasure from her father's private car, in which she had been over most of the United States, and had gone even to Mexico. In the Margrave household it was always spoken of as "the car." Its cook and porter were kept on the pay-roll of the company, but when they were not on active service in the car, one of them drove the Margrave carriage, and the other opened the Margrave front door. The Margrave house was one of the handsomest in Clarkson. Margrave had not coursed in the orbits of luminaries greater than himself without acquiring wisdom. When he built a house he turned the whole matter over to a Boston architect with instructions to go ahead just as if a gentleman had employed him; he did not want a house which his neighbors could say was exactly what any one would expect of the Margraves. Clarkson was proud of the Margrave house, which was better than the Porter house, though it lacked the setting of the Porter grounds. The architect had done everything; Margrave kept his own hands off and sent his wife and Mabel abroad to stay until it was ready for occupancy. When the house was nearly completed Margrave took Warry Raridan up to see it and displayed with pride a large and handsomely furnished library whose ample shelves were devoid of books.