Part 9

"It is in South Carolina; I can't answer for New Munich."

"_Her_ puttin' on airs like that!" wondered Sadie, "when they ain't in society."

Margaret rose to go to the parlour. "Are you coming?" she asked of Jennie and Sadie.

"We are not acquainted with our Danny's hired clerk," said Jennie primly, "and don't wish to be. I'll call the hired girl back and tell her to excuse you, Margaret, and us, too."

"No, I want to meet Miss Hamilton. I've been anxious to make the acquaintance of the giver of that rare little vase; she must be a person of taste. Shall I, then, excuse you?" she asked the other two women, moving a step toward the door. But Daniel took her hand to detain her. "Have yourself excused; I'd rather you did; it's not well to mix business and society. It was bold of Miss Hamilton to come here, and we must not encourage her to come again."

Strangely enough, this sort of a contingency had not arisen before, for the simple reason that on every occasion, hitherto, when people had called whom Jennie and Sadie considered undesirable acquaintances for her, Margaret had happened to be out. They had either just thrown away the cards of such visitors, or had explained to Margaret that she must not return their visits. Margaret had not discussed the matter with them, but had kept the addresses of every visitor of whom she was informed, intending, of course, to call upon them all as soon as New Munich "society" would cease from its siege of entertaining her.

"But, Daniel," she patiently answered him, "I'm quite serious in telling you that a person who could select such a thing of beauty as that Venetian vase, I'm sure I shall find much more interesting than--than some of the people I've been meeting, kind and hospitable though they've been."

"But it's very bad policy to encourage familiarity in subordinates. She _works_ for me, Margaret."

"Don't you see, Daniel, that's why it behooves me not to be excused to her?" she smiled, withdrawing her hand, patting his cheek, and sailing out of the room.

"But, Margaret!" he called after her, only to hear her voice in the room beyond greeting, with her Southern cordiality, his hired secretary.

Daniel looked the annoyance and astonishment he felt. If she _would_ see Miss Hamilton, against his expressed wish, she needn't treat her like an equal--actually gush over her. Why! hear the two of them laughing and chattering over there in the parlour! She might at least be reserved and on her dignity with people beneath her.

"For goodness' sake, tell your wife, Danny," spoke in Jennie, voicing his own thought, "not to make herself so friendly and common to everybody. _Your_ wife don't have to! She has the right to be a little proud with people. I tell her, still, when callers come, 'To this one you can be as common as you want; but to this one, not so common.' But she don't seem to understand; leastways, she don't listen to me; she's the same to everybody, _whether_ or no. Or else she's just as likely as not to make herself common with a person like this Miss Hamilton and be awful quiet and indifferent-like with Mrs. Congressman Ocksreider and her daughter, or Judge Miller's family! You better talk to her and tell her what's what."

"It's funny," said Daniel, puzzled, "that she wouldn't know that much without being told."

"Yes, I think, then!" said Jennie, "and her as tony a person as what she seems to be."

"Yes, anyhow!" corroborated Sadie.

"Her being so friendly with everybody," continued Jennie, "is likely to make trouble when we come to send out invitations for your grand party. To be sure, the ones she made herself so common with will look to be invited; ain't?"

"But I want the party to be very exclusive, mind!" warned Daniel.

"To be sure you do. Trust me to see to that," promised Jennie.

"Will you hear those two in there laughing together like two school-girls!" wondered Sadie. "My goodness! And Miss Hamilton working for you for eight dollars a week!"

"I've had to raise her to ten," said Danny ruefully. "A lawyer in Lancaster offered her fifteen, and I couldn't let her go, she's too useful; so much better educated than the general run of stenographers. If she didn't prefer to live in New Munich with her parents, I'd have to compete with big city prices to keep her."

"Is she that smart, Danny?" Jennie asked, a touch of respect in her tone, her estimate of Miss Hamilton rising just two dollars' worth. "They say, too, that her father's such a smart high school teacher. Yes, they say the school board had to raise his salary, too, to keep him."

"It's very bad," said Daniel thoughtfully, "to have people who work for you know how valuable they are to you. Miss Hamilton knows she's worth money to me and so she gives herself airs--acts sometimes as though _she_ hired _me_ at ten dollars a week!--and then has the presumption to come here and call on my wife! I'd fire her if I could get any one _half_ as good. But she knows she's got the whip-handle. It's much better, much better, for an employee to feel _uncertain_ of his or her place. By the way," he added, drawing a purse from his pocket and taking a dollar from it, "you know we're all to go to Millerstown to have dinner at Hiram's to-morrow, so you'd better go out this afternoon, girls, and buy some presents for the four children. Here's a dollar--that's from Margaret and me; and if you each give fifty cents, that will make two dollars: enough to buy a nice little present for each one of them from all of us."

"All right, Danny," responded Jennie, taking the dollar. "I can get red booties for the baby, a hair ribbon for Naomi, a game for Zwingli, and a story book for Christian. Won't they be pleased?"

"And now," said Daniel, taking out his watch, "I've got just an hour to spare--let us make out the list of names for our party; for when Miss Hamilton goes, I'm going to 'phone for an automobile and take Margaret out for a little ride, and talk to her about some things."

XI

Margaret's instinct for self-preservation, being rapidly educated along new lines since her marriage, closed her lips in the presence of Jennie and Sadie upon the great delight she found in her new acquaintance, her husband's secretary; for though the standards of value which the Leitzels held as to most things in life had at first seemed to her incomprehensible, she was of late beginning to have a glimmering understanding of them. So, upon returning to the sitting-room after Miss Hamilton's call, she repressed any expression of her happiness, and not until she and Daniel were alone in the automobile which he had hired this afternoon for her pleasure, and incidentally for his own, did she speak of it. She had not yet learned the necessity of hiding from him, also, almost everything that she felt and thought.

"This is a red letter day for me, Daniel. I've found a friend! I've never had an intimate girl friend--oh! but I've yearned for one! Of all the many people I've met since I came here, there hasn't been one except that Miss Mary Aucker, who has since gone to Boston for the winter, whose society I'd prefer to that of a book or solitude. I'm not naturally a very good 'mixer,' I'm afraid, but in ten minutes Miss Hamilton and I--well, we simply found each other, deep down where we both live! It's such a novel and wonderful experience to me!" she softly exclaimed, her eyes shining. "It's going to give me the greatest happiness I've ever known!"

"The greatest happiness you've ever known! Why, Margaret----"

"I mean that I've ever known with a woman," she said soothingly.

"But, my dear!" he exclaimed, "what can you be thinking of? You can't make a friend of _my secretary_!"

"If she is a lady?"

"But she isn't. They don't go anywhere, these Hamiltons!"

"They are a cultured New England family, Daniel, and if they don't go into society here, it is probably because they don't want to. I'm sure I can't imagine why they _should_ want to. I don't mean, dear," she quickly added, not at all sincerely, "to cast any reflection upon your New Munich society; I'm speaking of society in general. It is rather unsatisfactory, isn't it? I wouldn't give up the friendship I'm going to have with Miss Hamilton for all the rest of New Munich society, I assure you."

"But you must give it up! Why, my dear, the Hamiltons are _renters_!"

"'Renters?'"

"Yes, renters!"

"What are 'renters?'"

"You know what I mean--they don't own the house they live in, they rent it."

"Oh!" Margaret fell back laughing against the seat of the car. "Of course if I had known that, Daniel, I shouldn't have found Miss Hamilton congenial, sympathetic, and companionable. Oh, Daniel!" she gasped with laughing.

But Daniel's sense of humour was not developed.

"You must be on your guard more, my dear," he gravely warned her, "or you will be getting yourself involved most uncomfortably with troublesome people. Do let Jennie and Sadie be your guides as to whom you should cultivate here and whom keep at a proper distance."

"Jennie and Sadie be my--select my friends for me?"

"Instruct you as to those _among_ whom you may select for yourself," he amended it. "They know New Munich and you don't."

"And they," thought Margaret wonderingly, "think themselves 'above' a cultured, sophisticated, well-bred girl like Miss Hamilton--they!"

"But, Daniel," she asked, genuinely puzzled, "that nice little woman that called yesterday, that I liked so much, said her husband was a grocer. I confess it rather shocked me. But you all seemed to approve of _her_. In New Munich is a grocer better than a teacher?"

"He's a wholesale grocer, which makes a vast difference, of course."

"Does it? And was the drygoods person who was with her also wholesale?"

"Mrs. Frantz? No, but she's rich, very rich. They own their handsome home at the head of our block. Listen, Margaret! While you were in the parlour with Miss Hamilton, Jennie and Sadie helped me make up the list for our party, and even I myself could not have discriminated more astutely than they did (Jennie especially) as to whom we ought to invite and whom we ought not. On Monday I'll have one of my office clerks address the envelopes for the invitations on a typewriter."

"Oh, my God, Daniel! You can't send typewritten invitations!"

"For goodness' sake, Margaret, cut out _swearing_! I'd be horribly mortified if any one heard you!"

Margaret was silent.

Daniel turned to glance at her uneasily, fearing he had offended her, but she was red with suppressed laughter and as she met his eye it broke forth in a little squeal.

"Oh, Daniel," she sighed, "swearing isn't as bad as slang, dear. I'd much rather hear you say 'Damn it' than 'cut it out.'"

She looked so pretty in her sable furs, another inheritance from an ancestor, that, the automobile being covered, he seized her face in his two hands and held his lips to hers for a long minute.

"Daniel," she said when he at last released her, "remind me to look over the list before you send the invitations. I may want to add some names."

"I don't think you will, dear. We drew up the list very carefully."

"I'll glance over it."

"But, Margaret," he firmly insisted, "the list is complete as it stands. You can't add any name to it that would not be objectionable to my sisters and me."

"I understand that the party is to be a large general affair, not small and exclusive? In that case, you know, we shall have to invite every one who has called and sent us gifts."

"Impossible! Why, our butcher sent us a gilt-framed Snow-Scene! and Sadie's dressmaker a souvenir spoon!"

"Then at least we must invite every one who has called on me."

"By no means. Wait until you have lived here long enough to have gotten your bearings and you'll see how right Jennie and Sadie and I are in drawing the line so carefully."

Margaret wisely desisted from further discussion of the matter, though she felt troubled by her conviction that she would certainly not find on that list the names of the few women of the town who had really interested her and who were probably "renters" or self-supporting or something else which, by the Leitzel standard, would class them with "dogs and sorcerers." But it was she and Daniel who were giving the party, and even though Jennie and Sadie did keep house for them, she was of course the nominal mistress of her husband's home and responsible for the courtesy or discourtesy extended to their acquaintances; and she did not like the idea of being made to appear a petty snob in the eyes of the few people of New Munich for whose opinion of her she cared. But what could she do about it?

"The people they seem to approve of have been the most vulgar who have called on me," she reflected. "And the few persons of breeding and education I've met here they have flouted. Yet I recognize the delicacy of their position--Jennie's and Sadie's--living here in their brother's house and dependent upon him. I don't want to assert myself in a way to make them feel their dependence. What can I do?"

"Another thing, Margaret," said Daniel in a tone of authority, "I want to ask you not to make yourself common with people beneath you."

"Make myself 'common?'"

"Why, you are as common with my secretary as you are with Mrs. Ocksreider or Mrs. and Miss Miller!"

"I'm 'common?'"

"Don't you think you are?"

"Well, in Charleston we weren't considered just to say common people, Daniel, though perhaps we were over-estimated."

"Good heavens, Margaret, I don't mean that you _yourself_ are common; I certainly wouldn't have married you if I had thought that. I mean you make yourself--well, too democratic. That's what I mean, too democratic."

"The prerogative of the well-born, Daniel, who don't feel the _necessity_ for snobbishness. Have you fixed the date for the party?"

"Yes, the twenty-second; three weeks from yesterday. I'll have the house decorated by a Lancaster florist and I'll have a caterer from Philadelphia." He repeated with relish his astonishing intention.

"But, Daniel, are you sure we can afford all that?"

He laughed exultantly. "Well, my dear, I've never given a large party and I'm going to impress the town! It will be the swellest thing that was ever given here! Why shouldn't it be? I can afford it--that is," he pulled himself up, "I can afford it _once_ in a while, and," he added with feeling, "I'm celebrating the happiest event of my whole life. You're worth all that it will cost, Margaret!"

"Thanks!"

"You're welcome, my dear."

"We must invite your step-mother to the party, Daniel."

A slight start expressed Daniel's disturbed surprise at this unexpected suggestion.

"She's too old and too--well, too unworldly."

He winced from the discovery that Margaret must some time make, that his step-mother was a Mennonite, talked Pennsylvania Dutch, was wholly uneducated and, in short, a disgrace to the Leitzel family.

"We must send her a card, Daniel, whether she comes or not."

"No, no; she might take a notion _to_ come!"

"But that would be lovely! I am so fond of old ladies. Why do you say 'No?'"

"I don't want her 'round!" he snapped fretfully. "Don't send her an invitation! She lives only fifteen miles from here and I do believe she'd _come_ if she were invited, she's so proud of being related to us! You see, Margaret," he added, preparing the way a bit, "she's not exactly our equal, I'm sorry to tell you."

"Then," thought Margaret, "she's undoubtedly a very superior woman!"

"Daniel!" she suddenly proposed, "if she lives only fifteen miles away, let's motor out to see her."

"We haven't time," said Daniel shortly.

"Some other time then? I'd like to meet her."

"Perhaps."

"Won't she be at Hiram's to-morrow at the family party at Millerstown?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because Hiram won't invite her. We have very little to do with her, my dear, except to give her her home."

"_You_ do that?" She wondered at the number of people he supported.

"Well, she lives in our old home near our coal lands. We don't charge her any rent."

"I'm going out to see her some time, Daniel. Since you don't care to visit her, I'll take Miss Hamilton. I'd like to see your coal lands and your old home."

Daniel looked apoplectic. "Margaret!" he gasped. "Listen to me! Don't speak to any one of my step-mother! Hardly any one knows we have one and we don't want them to know it."

"Gracious! Why not?"

"We're ashamed of her, Margaret. She's not a lady, though I don't see why that should reflect on us, since she isn't a blood relation. And as to Miss Hamilton, haven't I made it clear to you that it would humiliate me unbearably to have my wife seen in company with my stenographer?"

"Oh, but, Daniel, my dear, because her family are 'renters?' There, there," she patted him, "don't worry about me. I'm twenty-five years old, you know, and am surely competent to choose my own friends. And it's better to be renters than rotters. Let us go home, now, will you? It's getting late, and I'm cold--and hungry. Jennie promised us buckwheat cakes for supper. Tell me all about your brother Hiram's family," she added when Daniel had ordered the chauffeur to turn home. "How many children has he? I'll be so glad to get some children into my arms again--I'm so awfully homesick for Hattie's babies!"

There was a little catch in her voice and Daniel answered sympathetically: "I'd like to see Hattie's babies again myself! They certainly are nice little children--the most aristocratic looking children, Margaret, I ever saw. I hope," he lowered his voice, "that _our_ children will be as aristocratic looking."

Margaret closed her eyes for an instant as though to shut out some things she did not wish to see.

"How many children?" she repeated after a moment.

"Four: Zwingli, Naomi, Christian, and Daniel. Daniel, the baby, is my namesake of course. You see, Hiram had about decided I wasn't going to marry and that having no children of my own, I'd do well by my namesake. But," Daniel chuckled, "I fooled him, didn't I?"

"Do you like his wife?"

"Oh, yes, he did very well, very well indeed. Lizzie's worth thirty thousand dollars."

He paused expectantly. Here was Margaret's chance to speak up and tell him what she was worth.

"If she's worth that much," was Margaret's comment, "she certainly ought to be all wool and a yard wide. But I asked whether you liked her."

"Why, yes, she's a good wife," returned Daniel, disappointed, his tone dejected. _Why_ couldn't he make Margaret talk property? "Hiram married the richest woman in Millerstown. And she's a very capable and economical woman, too. You'll hear my brother preach to-morrow," he added with pride, cheering up a bit. "He's a fine preacher. So considered in Millerstown. If he had gone into the ministry younger, he'd have made his mark in his profession just as I have done in the law; but he was nearly thirty when he began to study. Yes," said Daniel as the car drew up at their door, "you'll hear a great sermon when you hear my brother Hiram preach."

XII

It was the next day on the train on their way to Millerstown, to visit Hiram's church and his family, that an illuminating little incident occurred in the matter of the gifts they were taking to the children.

"What's that package you have, Margaret?" Jennie inquired, rather in the tone of a demand, as the four of them sat in two facing seats of a day coach, Jennie and Sadie having both offered Daniel the seat by the window and regarding Margaret with evident disapproval because she had not offered hers.

"A book for the children," Margaret replied, thinking Jennie's question and tone both somewhat surprisingly impertinent. "An illustrated book of Bible stories. I found very little to choose from in the New Munich shops; this was the best thing I could find. I'm sure your brother Hiram will approve of such a proper book, though it's at the same time one that even naughty little boys will love--just full of gruesome pictures. That's why I got it."

"But Hiram's boys ain't naughty; they're awful well-behaved," Sadie corrected this unjust aspersion.

"I hope not too well-behaved, or I shan't feel at home with them. I like 'the dear, delightful bad ones,' as Riley calls them."

"You had no need to buy them a present, Margaret," Jennie reproved her. "Danny gave me a dollar yesterday for you and him, and then I and Sadie each put fifty cents at--and I got nice presents for the children from us all together."

"What did you pay for the book, Margaret?" asked Daniel. "It looks large."

"I forget exactly; three dollars, I believe, or two-fifty."

"Tut, tut!" exclaimed Daniel hastily. "You're too extravagant!"

"My goodness! Two-fifty or three dollars yet!" cried Jennie. "Money must be a-plenty with you, Margaret."

"I'll tell you what," suggested Daniel fussily: "keep back the presents you brought along, Jennie, and give the book from us all, and then the next time we come to Hiram's we can use those other presents."

"Yes, well, but," objected Jennie, "then I and Sadie won't have paid our full share if Margaret gave two-fifty or three dollars for the book yet."

"Which was it, Margaret?" Daniel inquired a bit sharply. "Surely you know whether you paid two-fifty or three dollars for the book?"

"Does it matter? If you require the exact statistics I remember the price of the book was three-fifty, and they offered it to me for three."

"Then, Jennie," said Daniel, "you and Sadie each give a quarter more and we'll save back the other things until the next time."

And to Margaret's unspeakable astonishment her husband's sisters opened their purses, counted out twenty-five cents each and passed it over to Daniel, who serenely received it and dropped it into his own purse.

"If you're playing a game," said Margaret, holding out her hand, "I'll take my share, please--two and a quarter."

"But you and I are one," said Daniel jocularly, "and what's mine is----"

"Your own?" asked Margaret as he hesitated.

Daniel laughed with appreciation of this witty retort. It was discouraging to Margaret that he always laughed when she was fatuous and never when she said a thing she considered rather good.

"And, my dear," he admonished her, "remember after this that we always put together to buy for Hiram's children. We can do better that way, not only for the children, but it comes lighter on each one of us."

Margaret did not reply. The incident, somehow, struck a chill to her heart.

"It must be," she concluded, "that Jennie and Sadie have some little income of their own and are not entirely dependent upon Daniel."

If this were true, she felt it would exonerate her from some of the forbearance she had been so carefully practising.

As they reached Millerstown just in time for the opening of the service at Hiram's church, Margaret first saw her brother-in-law from the front pew, as he stood before his congregation in his pulpit.

"You take notice," Jennie had warned her on their way from the station to the church, "how the folks in Hiram's church look when we come in and walk up to the front pew."

"At me?"

"Well, at you, mebby, _this_ Sunday, because this is the first time they are seeing you. But it's Danny they look at mostly, such a way-up lawyer as he is, coming into their church. And every year he gives them a contribution yet."

There actually was a stir in the congregation as the party of four was ushered to the pew reserved for them, and Margaret noted curiously the look of satisfaction it brought to the faces of her husband and his sisters.

The village volunteer choir was singing a "selection" as they entered:

"We're going home to glory In the good old-fashioned way."

In Hiram's prayer, which followed, he informed God, whom he addressed in epistolary style as "Dear God," that "the good old-fashioned way" was plenty good enough for the members of the Millerstown United Brethren Church.