things, after due word with Mrs. Truesdale, her homely but
useful housekeeper, she ordered lamb. And the appropriate
vegetables and dessert having been decided upon, she
gave herself over to thoughts of her eldest daughter Myra,
who, having graduated from Smith College several years
before, was still unmarried. And the reason for this, as Mrs.
Griffiths well understood, though she was never quite willing
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to admit it openly, was that Myra was not very good looking.
Her nose was too long, her eyes too close-set, her chin not
sufficiently rounded to give her a girlish and pleasing
appearance. For the most part she seemed too thoughtful
and studious—as a rule not interested in the ordinary social
life of that city. Neither did she possess that savoir faire, let
alone that peculiar appeal for men, that characterized some
girls even when they were not pretty. As her mother saw it,
she was really too critical and too intellectual, having a mind
that was rather above the world in which she found herself.
Brought up amid comparative luxury, without having to
worry about any of the rough details of making a living, she
had been confronted, nevertheless, by the difficulties of
making her own way in the matter of social favor and love—
two objectives which, without beauty or charm, were about
as difficult as the attaining to extreme wealth by a beggar.
And the fact that for twelve years now—ever since she had
been fourteen—she had seen the lives of other youths and
maidens in this small world in which she moved passing
gayly enough, while hers was more or less confined to
reading, music, the business of keeping as neatly and
attractively arrayed as possible, and of going to visit friends
in the hope of possibly encountering somewhere,
somehow, the one temperament who would be interested
in her, had saddened, if not exactly soured her. And that
despite the fact that the material comfort of her parents and
herself was exceptional.
Just now she had gone through her mother’s room to her
own, looking as though she were not very much interested
in anything. Her mother had been trying to think of
something to suggest that would take her out of herself,
when the younger daughter, Bella, fresh from a passing
visit to the home of the Finchleys, wealthy neighbors where
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she had stopped on her way from the Snedeker School,
burst in upon her.
Contrasted with her sister, who was tall and dark and rather
sallow, Bella, though shorter, was far more gracefully and
vigorously formed. She had thick brown—almost black—
hair, a brown and olive complexion tinted with red, and eyes
brown and genial, that blazed with an eager, seeking light.
In addition to her sound and lithe physique, she possessed
vitality and animation. Her arms and legs were graceful and
active. Plainly she was given to liking things as she found
them—enjoying life as it was—and hence, unlike her sister,
she was unusually attractive to men and boys—to men and
women, old and young—a fact which her mother and father
well knew. No danger of any lack of marriage offers for her
when the time came. As her mother saw it, too many
youths and men were already buzzing around, and so
posing the question of a proper husband for her. Already
she had displayed a tendency to become thick and fast
friends, not only with the scions of the older and more
conservative families who constituted the ultra-respectable
element of the city, but also, and this was more to her
mother’s distaste, with the sons and daughters of some of
those later and hence socially less important families of the
region—the sons and daughters of manufacturers of bacon,
canning jars, vacuum cleaners, wooden and wicker ware,
and typewriters, who constituted a solid enough financial
element in the city, but who made up what might be
considered the “fast set” in the local life.
In Mrs. Griffiths’ opinion, there was too much dancing,
cabareting, automobiling to one city and another, without
due social supervision. Yet, as a contrast to her sister,
Myra, what a relief. It was only from the point of view of
proper surveillance, or until she was safely and religiously
married, that Mrs. Griffiths troubled or even objected to
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most of her present contacts and yearnings and gayeties.
She desired to protect her.“Now, where have you been?”
she demanded, as her daughter burst into the room,
throwing down her books and drawing near to the open fire
that burned there.“Just think, Mamma,” began Bella most
unconcernedly and almost irrelevantly. “The Finchleys are
going to give up their place out at Greenwood Lake this
coming summer and go up to Twelfth Lake near Pine Point.
They’re going to build a new bungalow up there. And
Sondra says that this time it’s going to be right down at the
water’s edge—not away from it, as it is out here. And
they’re going to have a great big verandah with a hardwood
floor. And a boathouse big enough for a thirty-foot electric
launch that Mr. Finchley is going to buy for Stuart. Won’t
that be wonderful? And she says that if you will let me, that
I can come up there for all summer long, or for as long as I
like. And Gil; too, if he will. It’s just across the lake from the
Emery Lodge, you know, and the East Gate Hotel. And the
Phants’ place, you know, the Phants of Utica, is just below
theirs near Sharon. Isn’t that just wonderful? Won’t that be
great? I wish you and Dad would make up your minds to
build up there now sometime, Mamma. It looks to me now
as though nearly everybody that’s worth anything down
here is moving up there.”She talked so fast and swung
about so, looking now at the open fire burning in the grate,
then out of the two high windows that commanded the front
lawn and a full view of Wykeagy Avenue, lit by the electric
lights in the winter dusk, that her mother had no opportunity
to insert any comment until this was over. However, she
managed to observe: “Yes? Well, what about the Anthonys
and the Nicholsons and the Taylors? I haven’t heard of their
leaving Greenwood yet.”
“Oh, I know, not the Anthonys or the Nicholsons or the
Taylors. Who expects them to move? They’re too old
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fashioned. They’re not the kind that would move anywhere,
are they? No one thinks they are. Just the same
Greenwood isn’t like Twelfth Lake. You know that yourself.
And all the people that are anybody down on the South
Shore are going up there for sure. The Cranstons next year,
Sondra says. And after that, I bet the Harriets will go, too.”
“The Cranstons and the Harriets and the Finchleys and
Sondra,” commented her mother, half amused and half
irritated. “The Cranstons and you and Bertine and Sondra—
that’s all I hear these days.” For the Cranstons, and the
Finchleys, despite a certain amount of local success in
connection with this newer and faster set, were, much more
than any of the others, the subject of considerable
unfavorable comment. They were the people who, having
moved the Cranston Wickwire Company from Albany, and
the Finchley Electric Sweeper from Buffalo, and built large
factories on the south bank of the Mohawk River, to say
nothing of new and grandiose houses in Wykeagy Avenue
and summer cottages at Greenwood, some twenty miles
northwest, were setting a rather showy, and hence
disagreeable, pace to all of the wealthy residents of this
region. They were given to wearing the smartest clothes, to
the latest novelties in cars and entertainments, and
constituted a problem to those who with less means
considered their position and their equipment about as fixed
and interesting and attractive as such things might well be.
The Cranstons and the Finchleys were in the main a thorn
in the flesh of the remainder of the elite of Lycurgus—too
showy and too aggressive.
“How often have I told you that I don’t want you to have so
much to do with Bertine or that Letta Harriet or her brother
either? They’re too forward. They run around and talk and
show off too much. And your father feels the same as I do
in regard to them. As for Sondra Finchley, if she expects to
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go with Bertine and you, too, then you’re not going to go
with her either much longer. Besides I’m not sure that your
father approves of your going anywhere without some one
to accompany you. You’re not old enough yet. And as for
your going to Twelfth Lake to the Finchleys, well, unless we
all go together, there’ll be no going there, either.” And now
Mrs. Griffiths, who leaned more to the manner and tactics
of the older, if not less affluent families, stared