Gorgeous Girl. I guess he’ll find out it was cheap at half the price!”

While talk ran riot Steve’s fortune multiplied with almost sinister speed. He learned that flattery and ridicule were the best weapons known to man. And while the Gorgeous Girl flew home at the first war cloud to bury herself in serious war activities Steve climbed the upward path and never once glanced backward lest he grow dizzy.

At thirty-two, in the year 1919, he was able to say to Mark Constantine, in the fashion of a fairy-story hero: “I still love your daughter, sir, and I’ve made my fortune. We want to be married. Your blessing, please.” And to himself: “I’ll show the worst side of me to the world so wolves won’t come and steal my precious gold that I had to have in order to win her; and I’ll show my best side to the woman I love, and that’s fair enough!”

With surprising accuracy Mary Faithful’s keen mind, aided by a tender heart, had pieced this mosaic business and love story together, and as she finished the panorama she glanced at the Gorgeous Girl in her mink dolman and bright red straw hat, the useless knitting bag on her arm, and Steve’s engagement ring blazing away on her finger, and she sighed unconsciously.

“Don’t tell Miss Faithful any more,” Beatrice protested. “I’m sure she knows about everything, and it’s late––I’m tired.”

“All right, lady fair. That’s all, Miss Faithful. Good-night,” Steve dismissed her abruptly.

As Mary left the room he was saying tenderly: “What did you do at cooking school?”

And the Gorgeous Girl was answering: “We made pistachio fondant; and next week it will be Scotch broth. It takes an hour to assemble the vegetables and I dread it. Only half the class were there, the rest were at Miss Harper’s classical-dancing lesson. That’s fun, too. I think I’ll take it up next year. I was just thinking how glad I am papa built the big apartment house five years ago; it’s so much nicer to begin housekeeping there instead of a big place of one’s own. It’s such work to have a house on your hands. Are you ready?”

“Hold on. Don’t I deserve a single kiss?... Thank you, Mrs. O’Valley.” Then the door closed.

Mary Faithful picked up her notations. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that no one should ever have reason to guess her secret. If all honest men steal umbrellas and kisses, so do all honest women fib as to the size of their shoes and the person they love best of all the world!

Sunday was a much-dreaded day in Mary’s calendar, partly because she surrendered herself to the maternal monologue of how dreadful it was to have a daughter in business and not a lady in a home of her own, and partly because she missed the office routine and the magical stimulation of Steve’s presence. Besides, Trudy was a thorn in Mary’s flesh and on Sundays the thorn had a chance to assert herself in particularly unendurable fashion.

For instance––the Sunday morning following the Gorgeous Girl’s visit to Steve’s office Trudy unwillingly dragged herself downstairs at half-past ten in a faded, bescrolled kimono over careless lingerie, her hair bundled under a partially soiled boudoir cap, and her feet flopping along in tattered silk slippers.

“Oh, dear, it’s Sunday again,” she began. “Goodness me, Mary, I’d hate to be as good as you are––always up and smiling! Why don’t you have a permanent smile put on your face? It would be lots easier.”

At which joke Luke giggled, and Mrs. Faithful, ensconced in a large rocker behind the starched curtains so that nothing passing on the street could escape her eagle, melancholy eye, nodded approval and added: “I should think Mary would lie abed the one morning she could. But no, she gets Luke up no matter what the weather is, and flies round like a house afire. When I was in my father’s house I 22 never had to lift a finger. Trudy, I wish you could have seen my bedroom. I had a mahogany four-poster bed with white draperies, and a dresser to match the bed, and my father bought me a silver toilet set when he was in Lexington, Kentucky, one time. He used to go there to sell horses. I remember one time I went with him and if I do say so I was much admired.

“I rode horseback those days and I had a dappled-gray pony named Pet, and everyone said it was just like looking at a picture to see me go prancing by. Of course I never thought about it. I wore a black velvet riding habit with a long train and a black velvet hat with a white plume just floating behind, and I had white gauntlets, too.

“Mary, Trudy wants her coffee. Hot cakes? Oh, pshaw, they won’t hurt you a mite. I was raised on ’em. I guess I’ll have another plateful, Mary, while you’re frying ’em. I’m so comfortable I hate to get up.... You poor little girls having to go out and hustle all week long and not half appreciated! Never mind, some Prince Charming will come and carry you off sometime.” Whereat she waddled to the table to wait for the hot cakes to arrive.

Mrs. Faithful had pepper-and-salt-coloured hair and small dark eyes that snapped like an angry bird’s, and a huge double chin. Her nondescript shape resolved itself into a high, peaked lap over which, when not eating hot cakes, her stubby hands seemed eternally clasped.

“Mary takes after her pa, poor child,” she had told Trudy confidentially. “Lean and lank as a clothes pole! And those gray eyes that look you straight through. I wish she didn’t think so much of the 23 office and would get a nice young man. I’d like to know what it is in those books she finds so fascinating. Can you tell me? I tried to read Omar Canine myself but it was too much for me.”

“I’m no highbrow,” Trudy had laughed. “Mary is; and a fine girl, besides,” she had added, resentfully.

With all Trudy’s shallow nature and shrewd selfishness she was as fond of Mary as she was capable of being fond of any one. Besides, it was more comfortable to be a member of the Faithful household for nine dollars a week and be allowed hot cakes and sirup à la kimono on Sunday morning; to have Gaylord Vondeplosshe, her friend, frequent the parlour at will; to use the telephone and laundry, and to occupy the best room in the house than to have to tuck into a room similar to Miss Lunk’s––and she was truly grateful to Mary for having taken her in. She felt that Mrs. Faithful underestimated her man of the family.

Mary at the present time earned forty dollars a week. Out of this she supported her family and saved a little. At regular intervals she tried persuading her mother to leave the old-fashioned house and move into a modern apartment, which would give her the opportunity of dispensing with Trudy as a boarder. But her mother liked Trudy, with her airs and graces, her beaux, her startling frocks. Trudy was company; Mary was not. She was the breadwinner and a wonderful daughter, as Mrs. Faithful always said when callers mentioned her. But the mother had never been friends with her children nor with their father. So Mary had grown up accustomed to work and loneliness; and, most important of all, accustomed to considering everyone else first 24 and herself last. It was Mary who saw beneath the boisterousness of Luke’s boy nature and spied the good therein, trying to develop it as best she could. Aside from Luke and her business she found amusement in her dream life of loving Steve O’Valley and vicariously sharing his joys and sorrows, safeguarding his interests.

She had told herself four years ago: “You clumsy, thin business woman––the idea of halfway