Mrs. Stanton had taken a great liking to Rodney. His manner toward her had just the blend of deference and breezy unconventionality that pleased her. So, while Portia would worry through the dinner, for fear it wouldn't be cooked well enough, or served well enough, not to present a sorry contrast to the meals her guests were accustomed to, her mother would sit beaming upon the pair with a contentment as unalloyed as if Rose were the acknowledged new leader of the great Cause and her husband her adoring convert, as they had been in her old day-dream. As far as Rodney went, the dream might have been true, for he showed an unending interest in the Woman Movement--never tired of drawing from his mother-in-law the story of her labors and the exposition of her beliefs. Sometimes he argued with her playfully in order to get her started. More often, and as far as Portia could see, quite seriously, he professed himself in full accord with her views. After this had been going on for about so long, Rose would yawn and stretch and sit down on the arm of her mother's chair, begin stroking her hair and offering her all manner of quaint unexpected caresses. And then, pretty soon, Rodney's attention to the subject would begin to wander and at last flag altogether and leave him stranded, gazing and unable to do anything but gaze, at the lovely creature--the still miraculous creature, who, when he got her home again, would come and sit on the arm of his chair like that! When this happened, Portia found it hard to stay in the room. Until Mrs. Stanton's terrifying illness along in January, these meetings constituted the whole of the intercourse between the families. Rose had done her best to carry Portia with her, to some extent at least, into her new life--to introduce her to her new friends and make her, as far as might be, one of them. And in this she was seconded very amiably, by Frederica. But Portia had put down a categorical veto on all these attempts. She hadn't the inclination nor the energy, she said, and her mother needed all the time she could spare away from her business. Once, when Rose pressed the matter, she gave a more genuine reason. Rose's new friends, she said, would regard her introduction to them solely as a bid for business. She didn't want them coming around to her place to buy their wedding presents "in order to help out that poor old maid sister of Rose Aldrich's." She was getting business enough in legitimate ways. Sometimes she told herself that if Rose had really wanted her, she'd have pressed the matter harder--wouldn't have given up unless she was clutching with real relief at an excuse that let her out of an embarrassment. But at other times she accused herself of having acted in a petty snobbish spirit in declining the chance not only for pleasant new friendships, especially Frederica's, but for a closer association with her sister. Well, the thing was done now, and the question certainly never would rise again.