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?

"............