She was insatiably curious about the secrets of other homes while protecting her own, but this was hardly so much from malice as from a longing to feel that other people had as much to conceal as she. The children had talked the thing over with their parents and the strain was taken from their minds. Immy less often slashed the silence with those shrieks of hers. She and Keith were busy growing up and playing in the toyshop of new experiences. RoBards tried lawsuits with fair success, and his fees were liberal; he often secured fifty dollars for a case requiring no more than two or three days in court. His house rent was six hundred dollars a year, and his office rent and clerical expenses took another five hundred. This left enough to give Patty and the children all the necessary comforts, including two hired women, though most of these were ignorant, impudent, and brief of stay, even though their wages had gradually trebled until some of them were demanding as high as two dollars a week. While RoBards practiced the law, Patty visited the shops and the gossip marts, went to church, and indulged in modest extravagances of finance, scandal, and faith. The baby grew and another came, and went; but Patty never became quite matronly. She took fierce care of her figure, lacing herself to the verge of suffocation and trying all the complexion waters advertised. Patty was the very weather-vane of the fashion-winds. She was not one of the increasing class of women who boldly invaded the realms of literature and politics; her battlefield was amusement. She was one of those of whom a writer in the New York _Review_ said: “The quiet of domestic life has been lost in this stirring age; nothing will satisfy but action, notoriety, and distinction.” Like all the other women, who could (or could not) afford it, Patty dressed in the brightest of colors and flaunted coquetry in her fabrics. Visitors from overseas commented on the embarrassments they had encountered from mistaking the most respectable American wives for courtesans because of their gaudy street dress, their excessive powder, their false hair, and their freedom from escort. The chief cross in her life and her husband’s was the burden of her parents’ company. They were not interested in modern heresies and manners, found them disgusting. Patty was bored to frenzy by their tales of the good old times of their memory. The old man grew increasingly impatient of the law’s delay. He had less and less time to spend on earth, and that two hundred thousand dollars the city owed him grew more and more important. It seemed impossible, however, to speed the courts. One or two similar suits against the city on account of buildings similarly blown up to check the fire of 1835 were won by the city, and RoBards dreaded the outcome of his father-in-law’s claim. He dreaded the loss of the vast sum at stake even less than the effect of the loss on Mr. Jessamine’s sanity.