Margaret's radiant happiness in the discovery she made on the very day after the party, that she was embarked on the wonderful passage to motherhood, fraught with its strangely mingled suffering and bliss, was somewhat tempered by the consciousness that the coming child would have to be a Leitzel; there was no escaping that catastrophe. She tried to persuade herself that the Leitzel characteristics, if properly educated, might not be so very lamentable; but her deep-down conviction that her child ran the risk of inheriting a small, mean soul gave her no little anxiety and self-reproach.

"My penalty for trying to compromise with life's austerities!" she grimly told herself with sad misgiving.

Her husband's joy and pride in the prospect of being a father consoled her somewhat, it was so human and normal of him; though even here the taint of greed entered in, he was so inordinately pleased that his money would not have to be left to Hiram's children.

Indeed, during the earlier weeks of her pregnancy, Margaret tried hard to keep her mind off the topics discussed in the bosom of the family, so fearful was she of the effect, upon her child, of her own recoil from the Leitzel view of life.

She found that they never would get done talking about the cost of that party; it was evidently going to occupy them for the rest of their mortal lives. The worst of it was they so insisted upon impressing it upon her.

"Hiram never spent that much for a party for his Lizzie, and she brought her husband thirty thousand dollars. It ain't many husbands that would so spend for a wife that—well, don't you think, too, Margaret, that Danny's awful generous considering?"

"Considering what, Jennie?"

"Ach, Margaret, don't be so dumb! Considering you ain't got anything."

"Oh, yes, I have something—youth and health and intelligence and good temper. I'm a prize. Daniel thinks so."

"But you see," interposed Sadie, "our Danny could have had any of our rich town girls here."

"And yet preferred me. His good taste. The only instance of it I've ever noticed."

She knew the puzzled despair of her husband's sisters over their inability to make her humbly grateful for that she, a penniless bride, had been "chosen" by their brother. But that she should fail to appreciate the expenditure for the party given in her honour was too much.

"Why, Danny's bills come to three hundred dollars yet!" Jennie told her with heat. "And Sadie ain't well yet from over-eating that rich supper we had that night off of the Philadelphia caterer!"

"Yes, I feel it yet," said Sadie plaintively. "Just to think, Margaret, that Danny spent three hundred dollars for the party for you!"

"Did he get off so easily as that? The flowers were so abundant and the supper so nice, I would have supposed they would have cost more than that, if I had thought about the cost."

"Well, why didn't you think about the cost, when it was all for you?"

"I didn't think about it, my dears, because the cost of things doesn't interest me; I have so many more interesting things to think about. This, for instance," she said, holding up the dainty baby dress on which she had been sewing as they all sat together in the sitting-room, awaiting Daniel's coming home to his noon dinner.

"But it's a wife's place to——"

Daniel's entrance cut short Jennie's admonitions. The dinner-table talk, however, scarcely relieved the tension on Margaret's nerves.

Daniel was always expansive as to his business "deals" when he felt complacent, and to-day his state of mind was one of unusual satisfaction, for just before dinner Margaret had displayed to him (surreptitiously, to spare the virgin squeamishness of Jennie and Sadie) the baby things upon which she had been working, and his delight in them was like unto that of a woman. He was therefore talkative and confidential over his roast beef.

"Well, Margaret, you can be proud of the way your husband upholds Christian principles in this community. I received in my morning's mail a letter from the Board of Managers of the Y.W.C.A. thanking me for the stand I took at the meeting yesterday afternoon of the stockholders of the Country Club on the question of Sunday sports. Some of the men want tennis and golf allowed on Sunday, but I stand for the sanctity of the Sabbath, and I wouldn't give in one inch. I'm the biggest stockholder of the club and they can't go against my vote in anything. I may say I rule the Country Club. One fellow, Abe Meyers, got up and declared he'd organize a new country club before he'd 'submit to the tyranny of one hidebound Pharisee!' What do you think of that?" chuckled Daniel. "'The tyranny of one hidebound Pharisee!' Sour grapes, of course. He hasn't the cash or the influence to organize another club. I told them that so long as I was a member of that club, the sanctity of the Sabbath should be preserved. Golf and tennis six days of the week, but on the Sabbath, no sports; and I said I knew I had behind me the support of our Christian community. You see, Margaret, if I withdrew, the club couldn't go on."

"That very fact," said Margaret, her voice rather weak, "ought, I should think, make you unwilling to impose your theories upon the other members. Noblesse oblige, you know."

But Daniel was incapable of seeing this point of view.

"The evening papers," he continued, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction, "will give a full account of the meeting yesterday and publish, also, the letter of thanks sent to me by the Y.W.C.A. I handed that letter to a reporter of the Intelligencer. You'll see it in to-night's paper, Margaret."

"Oh!" breathed Jennie and Sadie, awe and admiration in their tones, and worship in the glances sent across the table to Daniel. "Here, Emmy," Jennie ordered the maid, "don't you see Mr. Danny's milk glass is empty? Fill it up. Do you like these pickles, Danny? They're the first I opened yet."

"They're of just precisely the degree of sourness I like," Daniel nodded approvingly.

"Danny's so much for sour," Jennie informed Margaret. "Yes, you took notice already, I guess, how he eats sour all the time at his meals, even up to his pie. I have to put up a lot of pickles and Chili sauce and chow-chow for him. Ain't, Danny? And he says no one's sour tastes so good to him as what mine does. I don't know what he would do," she said in consternation, "if I was taken and he couldn't have his sour any more."

"There's Heinz's fifty-seven varieties," said Margaret.

"Heinz!" scoffed Jennie. "Our Danny eat that Heinz stuff, used as he is to good home-made sour! Well, Margaret, you don't mean to tell me you'd feed that to our Danny! I'd turn in my grave!"

"I'd 'feed him' Heinz's fifty-seven varieties and tell him I'd made them myself; a plan, you see, which would make Daniel happy while it saved my time and energies for something more useful than pickles."

"You'd deceive him?" exclaimed Sadie, scandalized. "Tell a lie to your own husband yet!"

"Is a lie ever justifiable?" asked Margaret ponderously. "History and psychology answer, Yes; to the insane, the nervously distorted, and to spoiled and pampered men creatures."

"Well, you'd have a hard time fooling our Danny! He ain't so easy fooled. A good thing he's got us to look after him if you wouldn't even put up sour for him!"

"Now I begin to see," said Margaret, "that the man, Heinz, creator of 'sour,' is a human benefactor and should have a noble monument erected to him by put-upon wives. I'll start the movement."

"A stroke of luck," Daniel here broke into the dispute, "came to me to-day. You remember, Margaret, the leather store on the corner of Third and Prince streets?"

"Yes."

"Danny owns near that whole block," Jennie quickly informed her, though Margaret's persistent indifference to such facts was a constant irritation to her and Sadie.

"I've been getting one hundred dollars a month rent for that store," Daniel stated, while his sisters listened breathlessly to such fascinating statistics. "Three months ago, George Trout, the renter, came to me and said he'd have to have more storeroom for his growing business and wanted me to extend the room back into the lot. He laid it off to me how I ought to do this for him because he had rented that roo............