For these innovations Miss Grierson was indirectly, though not less intentionally, responsible; and her satisfaction was in just proportion to the results attained. But in spite of these successes there were still obstacles to be surmounted. From the first there had been a perverse minority refusing stubbornly to bow the head in the house of--Grierson. The Farnhams were of it, and the Raymers, with a following of a few of the families called "old" as age is reckoned in the Middle West. The men of this minority were slow to admit the omnipotence of Jasper Grierson's money, and the women were still slower to accept Miss Grierson on terms of social equality. At the house-warming this minority had been represented only by variously worded regrets. At a reception, given to mark the closing of Mereside, socially, on the eve of Miss Margery's departure for the winter in Florida, the regrets were still polite and still unanimous. Miss Margery laughed defiantly and set her white teeth on a determined resolution to reduce this inner citadel of conservatism at all costs. Accordingly, she opened the campaign on the morning after the reception; began it at the breakfast-table when she was pouring her father's coffee. "You know everybody, and everybody's business, poppa: who is the treasurer of St. John's?" she inquired. "How should I know?" grumbled the magnate, whose familiarity with church affairs was limited to certain writings of a legal nature concerning the Presbyterian house of worship upon which he held a mortgage. "You ought to know," asserted Miss Margery, with some asperity. "Isn't it Mr. Edward Raymer?" Jasper Grierson frowned thoughtfully into space. "Why, yes; come to think of it, I guess he is the man. Anyway, he's one of their--what do you call 'em--trustees?" "Wardens," corrected Margery. "Yes, that's it; I knew it was something connected with a penitentiary. What do you want of him?" "Nothing much of him: but I want a check for five hundred dollars payable to his order." Jasper Grierson's laugh was suggestive of the noise made by a rusty door-hinge. The tilting of the golden cornucopia had made him a ruthless money-grubber, but he never questioned his daughter's demands. "Going in for the real old simon-pure, blue-ribbon brand of respectability this time, ain't you Madgie?" he chuckled; but he wrote the check on the spot.