father-in-law. Mr. Spragg had come to Apex as a poor boy, and their
early married life had been a protracted struggle, darkened by domestic
affliction. Two of their three children had died of typhoid in the
epidemic which devastated Apex before the new water-works were built;
and this calamity, by causing Mr. Spragg to resolve that thereafter
Apex should drink pure water, had led directly to the founding of his
fortunes.

"He had taken over some of poor father's land for a bad debt, and when
he got up the Pure Water move the company voted to buy the land and
build the new reservoir up there: and after that we began to be better
off, and it DID seem as if it had come out so to comfort us some about
the children."

Mr. Spragg, thereafter, had begun to be a power in Apex, and fat years
had followed on the lean. Ralph Marvell was too little versed in affairs
to read between the lines of Mrs. Spragg's untutored narrative, and he
understood no more than she the occult connection between Mr. Spragg's
domestic misfortunes and his business triumph. Mr. Spragg had "helped
out" his ruined father-in-law, and had vowed on his children's graves
that no Apex child should ever again drink poisoned water--and out
of those two disinterested impulses, by some impressive law of
compensation, material prosperity had come. What Ralph understood and
appreciated was Mrs. Spragg's unaffected frankness in talking of her
early life. Here was no retrospective pretense of an opulent past,
such as the other Invaders were given to parading before the bland but
undeceived subject race. The Spraggs had been "plain people" and had not
yet learned to be ashamed of it. The fact drew them much closer to the
Dagonet ideals than any sham elegance in the past tense. Ralph felt
that his mother, who shuddered away from Mrs. Harmon B. Driscoll, would