"I fail to see that there is anything particularly criminal in a thumb," Letitia retorted. "It is not the thumb of an outsider. She made the pudding herself with her own hands and thumbs. Don't be so exasperating, Archie. Oh, yes, I know that it isn't nice, and that it's very bad form. But I shan't tell her about it. I'm not going to add to her burden. Evidently, she feels her position--" "And our rice pudding--" "--very acutely. She seems to me like a woman who has known better days. Probably the Vanderbilts treat their inferiors very badly. There is nothing like the insolence and the superciliousness of people of that class. It shall be my endeavor to show her the difference. I shall go out of my way to be sweet and soothing to her. She feels strange, of course. You can go into the drawing-room and smoke there to-night. I shall go and see that Nellie is comfortable." It was no use arguing. I went to the drawing-room, discontentedly enough, and broke the rules of the house by smoking there. It was with Letitia's permission, to be sure, but I felt uneasy. It was the thin end of the wedge, and I hated to think of the whole wedge. My nerves were on edge and I could settle to nothing. I kept fancying I heard Mrs. Potzenheimer sobbing, and Letitia soothing her, with a "There now!" Even the unsatisfied yearning sensation that had succeeded Anna Carter's delicatessen dinner was better than this. We seemed to have engaged trouble, at big wages, and the thought was maddening. If Letitia Potzenheimered every night after dinner, what would become of me, I selfishly wondered. Of course, I had my _Lives of Great Men_, but just at present mere greatness "riled" me. The very thought of greatness evaporated in reflections upon Mrs. Potzenheimer. The clock struck nine, and still I sat smoking in solitary silence. I picked up Letitia's Cicero, open at _De Senectute_, and it seemed ominous. "Neither gray hairs nor wrinkles," I read, "can suddenly catch respect; but the former part of life, honorably spent, reaps the fruit of authority at the close. For these very observances, which seem light and common--" I shut the book with a bang. In sudden irritation I wondered how Letitia could read such rubbish. Yes, rubbish, I asserted in mental indignation. Thank goodness that my wife didn't hear me, and that nobody heard me. My mood was surely no excuse for an insult hurled at the sacred memory of Cicero, amiably addressing Titus Pomponius Atticus. How could Letitia toboggan from Cicero to Mrs. Potzenheimer? It was just ten o'clock when my wife joined me. She looked very tired and I saw that she had been weeping. This touched me, and the hasty words that my lips had formed remained unsaid.