CHAPTER I.

The total,” began Jacob Willoughby, adjusting his _pince-nez_ and regarding with near-sighted attention the scrap of paper he had selected from a little white heap on the table in front of him--“the total is just four thousand five hundred and seventy-six dollars and ninety-seven cents.”

The figures froze the features of the Willoughby connection into immobility for a second, but only for a second.

“I agreed to buy her wraps,” spoke up crisply Miss Willoughby, a maiden lady of vinegary aspect, who sat on the extreme edge of the horsehair and mahogany chair and glowered at the white heap on the table. “Read the bill, Jacob.”

Obediently Jacob searched through the heap and extracted another scrap. “Total, one thousand five hundred and forty-three dollars and eighty-three cents,” he announced, ponderously.

If she hadn’t been a Willoughby, one would have said that the lady of vinegary aspect snorted. All the Willoughbys, however, prided themselves on never doing anything low. “_That_ for wraps,” muttered this one, acidulously. “And she wheedled a set of sables out of Jacob at Christmas time.”

Mr. Willoughby coughed deprecatingly and avoided the eye of his wife, a woman with an appallingly firm chin who sat opposite him. She now spoke sharply. “It’s Jacob’s ridiculous lack of backbone that’s to blame for all this foolish extravagance,” she declared. “Why did he consent in the first place to Jane’s furnishing that expensive flat? Why did he get us to agree to divide the expense of her clothes among us, and make us the victim of her spendthrift habits? For what she calls _lingerie_”--Mrs. Jacob Willoughby pronounced the French word with ineffable scorn, as though it suggested a multitude of moral lapses--“she has run up a bill of---- What’s the amount, Jacob?”

Her husband, who was beginning to look crushed, searched with pathetic haste through the white drift of papers, selected another slip and readjusted his _pince-nez_. Suddenly a wave of red swept over his distressed features.

“Well?” queried his wife, sharply.

“She’s--she’s itemized it!” murmured the unresourceful Jacob, faintly.

Thomas Willoughby, bachelor, who was a trifle hard of hearing, but whose other faculties were very sharp, leaned forward and put his hand behind his ear. “What say?” he demanded, querulously. “Speak up louder, man, can’t you?” Thomas, who was sixty, regretted his affliction chiefly because it so frequently prevented his hearing the recital of some fresh deviltry of Jane’s.

Mrs. Jacob now interposed. “The total’s on the other side,” she said, eying her husband suspiciously, and, with a guilty air, he hastily reversed the paper. “The amount is eight hundred and seventeen dollars and sixteen cents,” he informed his auditors, lifelessly.

“And just for one season,” supplemented Mrs. Willoughby. “It’s more than I spend--it’s more, I’m sure, than any of us spend”--she surveyed the Willoughby connection virtuously--“in five years.”

“Oh, well,” gurgled the youngest and most attractive of the Willoughbys that were present, a placid, fair-haired woman, to whom any account of Jane and her doings always read like a page out of a thrilling novel, “she’s only twenty-four, you know, and it costs more to live in New York than in the country.” The lady sighed. Her country home was luxurious, but in her soul she longed for the flesh pots represented by a New York season. Her husband, however, devoted to his Alderney cows, his Berkshire hogs and his fancy fowls, put his foot down firmly whenever the subject of a town house, or even a brief month at one of the quieter hotels, was mentioned.

“Of course it costs more to live in New York,” snapped Miss Willoughby, “and I’ve contended all along that Jane has no business keeping up that flat in town. In the first place, ’tisn’t proper. A young woman with her flighty ideas and without a chaperon or any female relation to give her countenance! Mark my words”--with acrid emphasis--“Jane will yet trail the Willoughby name in the dust.”

“Why doesn’t she marry again?” queried the Willoughby bachelor, impatiently. “Deuce take it, De Mille’s been dead a year and six months. Is the girl determined to wear widow’s weeds forever. Gad!” he chuckled, shrilly, “I’d marry her myself to-morrow if I wasn’t sixty and her uncle. Not,” he added, hastily, for he, like most of the Willoughbys, was notoriously close-fisted, “that I countenance her extravagance. But she needs a husband’s discipline.”

The depressed Jacob Willoughby here saw an opportunity to put in a word in vindication of himself.

“You all know perfectly well,” he began, with dignity, “that when De Mille up and died, just when his affairs were in the most critical condition, and when a little firmness on his part would have kept him alive long enough to save something out of the wreck for his widow, Jane declared that she wouldn’t be bored with another husband, and that if the connection couldn’t support her in the style to which she was accustomed, she would go on the stage. When I said she might spend her time with us, visiting each of us in turn, you know she flatly refused, and insisted upon an apartment. She said that, though He was a Willoughby Himself”--Jacob repeated this Janeism with peculiar relish--“God never intended relations to be lived with, that they were generally people you’d have nothing to do with if the accident of birth hadn’t made them cousins, uncles and aunts.” As a matter of fact, when Jane had uttered this impertinence, she had excepted Jacob, but the senior Willoughby was too wise to hint at the exception in the presence of his wife, who was also a Willoughby.

“You should have been firm,” she observed, witheringly. “That threat about her going on the stage was all nonsense.”

“It was not nonsense,” retorted her husband, with unexpected spirit, “and I had to think of the bishop.”

Jacob’s retort told as he meant that it should, and a painful pause ensued. It was the bachelor Willoughby who broke it. “Well,” he exclaimed, pettishly, drawing out his watch, “Jane will be here in five minutes, and dinner in half an hour. The question is, what are we going to do?”

“We are going to tell her,” snapped Miss Willoughby, “that the apartment must be given up, and that she must live with each of us in turn. Since she’s here--or will soon be here--she can remain a while with you, Susan, and then she can come to me. In the meantime, Jacob can see about subletting her apartment. Hark! There’s wheels! Now”--turning to her brother--“be firm, Jacob. Let us”--encouragingly, and glancing in turn at each of the Willoughbys, who, strange to relate, looked ill at ease, if not frightened--“let us all be firm.”

The door opened and everybody started. But it was only the butler.

“A telegram for you, sir,” he said to Mr. Jacob Willoughby, extending a yellow slip. The latter took it and hastily opened it. “It’s from Jane,” he announced, glancing up. Did the other Willoughbys imagine it or did his voice express relief?

“Read it,” commanded his wife, crisply.

You dear, good people, I’m the biggest wretch on earth. Did so want to get to you before the house party broke up, but there’s the Reffolds’ dinner for to-night which I had entirely forgotten. Hope to get down for a week end later. Love to all.

JANE.

For fully half a minute not a sound was heard in the stuffily furnished Willoughby library. Then Miss Willoughby, in a voice ominously calm, asked: “Will you kindly tell us the number of words in that telegram, Jacob?”

“Total, fifty,” murmured Jacob, reluctantly, dropping the yellow slip on the white heap and surveying it ruefully.

“Fifty!” echoed the Willoughby connection, feebly.

Susan Willoughby, Jacob’s wife, was the first to regain her mental equilibrium. “You will write this evening, Jacob?” she questioned, with stony composure.

“I will write this evening,” responded her husband, firmly.

The bachelor Willoughby suddenly chuckled. The outraged connection stared at him in astonishment. “I--I was just thinking,” he giggled, “that economy doesn’t seem to be Jane’s strong point.”

At its best, the Willoughby connection’s sense of humor was the reverse of keen, and the situation was not one, in their opinion, that invited levity. But whatever crushing blow threatened the frivolous member--and Mrs. Susan Willoughby and Miss Willoughby both looked primed--was happily averted by the opportune reappearance of the butler.

“Dinner is served,” he announced, solemnly, and Jacob Willoughby sprang with alacrity to offer his arm to the most attractive of the female Willoughbys.

“I will summon the bishop to wrestle with Jane,” announced Susan, magisterially, as she led the way to the dining room. And the connection realized that Jane had, indeed, become a problem.