Sadie Leitzel looked as though she were about to collapse with the pressure of all that she had to communicate to Jennie when next morning she returned alone, at noon, from a shopping excursion upon which she had started out just after breakfast with Margaret.

Dropping her bundles upon the centre table in the sitting-room, where Jennie sat in the bay window darning Daniel's socks, she dropped herself upon the sofa with a long breath of mingled excitement and exhaustion.

"Well, did she get her dress? And where is she at?" Jennie inquired.

"No, she didn't get her dress!" breathed Sadie, taking off, one by one, her veil, gloves, hat, furs, overshoes, and coat. "I guess she didn't have an intention of getting a dress when she started out with me! I had the hardest time to get her to even look at their things at Fahnestock's. She seems to think, Jennie, that New Munich hasn't anything good enough for her to wear!"

"Did she say that?" demanded Jennie.

"Well, when she had only just gave a careless glance at some of their ready-made evening dresses, she shook her head and said to me, 'There's nothing here; I'll have to wait until I go to Philadelphia some time.' And when I wanted her, then, to get goods and take it to Miss Snyder, she said Fahnestock's had such a cheap, poor quality of goods, not worth making up!"

"Well," pronounced Jennie, "I guess if our New Munich stores are good enough for you and me, they're plenty good enough for as plain a dresser as what she is! Our clothes are a lot dressier than hers! The idea!"

"Yes, the very idea!"

"And after Danny's telling her he wanted her to have a new dress! And me telling her that her dresses that she's got give us all a shamed face!"

"All she got new for herself," said Sadie, "was another pair of those long white kid gloves at four-fifty a pair. I told her silk ones would do just as good, and them you can wash. But she didn't listen to me; she just took my hand and held it out to the saleslady and told her to measure it and," added Sadie, a veiled pleasure coming into her eyes, "she got me a pair of long white kid gloves, too, and paid for them out of that twenty-dollar check Danny gave her!"

"Oh!" cried Jennie, shocked, "when Danny gave it to her for a dress yet! What'll he say anyhow?"

"She knows he's so crazy about her, she don't seem afraid to do anything!" said Sadie.

"He'll soon stop giving her money if she spends it on other ones instead of for what he tells her to buy!"

"Yes, I guess! But me—I never had any long white kid gloves before, Jennie!" Sadie could not repress her beaming pleasure. "They'll feel grand, I guess."

"Four-fifty is too much to put into a pair of gloves; your white silk ones would do plenty good enough."

"But she got you a pair, too, Jennie! Here they are," added Sadie, fumbling among her packages on the table. "She asked me your size and got you a pair, too."

"I won't wear them! I'll get the money back and give it to Danny!" declared Jennie, who, according to her lights, was as scrupulous as she was "close." "It ain't right to Danny for her to squander his money like that. My gracious! Thirteen-fifty for just gloves! You ought to take yours back, too, Sadie!"

"But the saleslady tried one of mine on and stretched them," returned Sadie, not very regretfully. "And mind, Jennie," she hastily diverted her sister from her suggestion, "mind what she did with the rest part of the twenty dollars!"

"What?" demanded Jennie.

"She spent every cent of it buying presents for her sister's children in Charleston! When I told her Danny wouldn't like it at all for her to do that, she said, 'Oh, but Daniel loves my little nephew and nieces; he will be glad to have me send them something from us both'; and she put in the package a card, 'From Daniel and Margaret for the three dearest babies in the world.'"

"My souls!" Jennie exclaimed. "What'll Danny say yet—her using up all that twenty dollars and nothing to show for it!"

"Except three pairs of white kid gloves." Sadie shook her head pensively, but still with a covert gleam of pleasure in her own share of the "rake-off."

"Well," said Jennie with emphasis, "I'll certainly give her a piece of my mind! Where is she at?"

"She said as it was twelve o'clock, she'd go to Danny's office and walk home with him for dinner; and what do you think she gave me as her reason for doing that?"

"Well, what?"

"She said she wanted a chance to see that Hamilton girl again that works for our Danny! Did you ever?—when we all told her already she can't associate with Danny's clerk!"

"Well, Sadie," said Jennie grimly, "Margaret's easy-going and she thinks we're the same. She'll have to learn her mistake, that's all. She ain't going to run with that Hamilton girl, and that's all there is to it! Enough said!"

"Och, Jennie, if you'd been along this morning you'd have wondered at her the way she acts, speaking so awful friendly and pleasant to the girls that waited on us in the store and even saying, 'Thank you, my dear,' to a little cash-girl! Yes, making herself that familiar! And then when Mrs. Congressman Ocksreider come along through the store and I poked Margaret that she should stop and speak to her, Margaret just nodded and walked right a-past her, though you could see that Mrs. Ocksreider was going to stop and talk to us! And, Jennie, I wanted the store-girls to see us conversing with Mrs. Ocksreider. I would have stopped and talked with her myself, whether or no, but she looked mad and sailed right a-past me the way Margaret had sailed a-past her, and I heard two girls at the button counter tittering and saying, 'Did you ever get left?' I was so cross at Margaret, I told her, 'You hardly spoke to her and she's Mrs. Congressman Ocksreider and worth a half a million dollars!' and Margaret answered me, 'I didn't think she was worth two cents any time I've talked with her. But if she's a member of Congress! Why, Sadie, you are deceiving me, Pennsylvania is not yet a Suffrage state!' she said, and I told her I didn't say it was and certainly hoped it never would be. 'But,' I said, 'that's neither here nor there, whether Pennsylvania's a Suffrage state! What I wish is that if you have to cut any one, let it be cash-girls and not our most high-toned lady-friends,' I said."

"And what," asked Jennie, "did she answer to that?"

"She said, 'Oh, Sadie, I feel quite too humble to want to 'cut' any one, even pretentious people like your Congressman's ordinary little wife!' 'Well,' I said. 'You're got no need to feel humble, now that you're married to our Danny!' But, Jennie," said Sadie, looking bewildered, "think of calling Mrs. Ocksreider 'ordinary little wife!'"

"Well, I think! It was enough to give you the headache, Sadie, such a morning as you've had!"

"But do you think, mebby," Sadie asked, a little awe-struck, "that Governors are higher than Congressmen—Margaret thinking herself better than Mrs. Ocksreider yet!"

"It would look that way," said Jennie, also impressed.

"Here she and Danny come!" Jennie announced at the sound of the opening of the front door. "They're laughing; so I guess he don't know yet about that twenty dollars!"

"And I guess............