thus hurting feelings and obstructing trade without occasion,
you merely offer a higher class of goods for the money, and leave
nature to take her course. It's wisdom, Aleck, solid wisdom,
and sound as a nut. Who's your fish? Have you nominated him yet?"

No, she hadn't. They must look the market over--which they did.
To start with, they considered and discussed Brandish, rising young
lawyer, and Fulton, rising young dentist. Sally must invite them
to dinner. But not right away; there was no hurry, Aleck said.
Keep an eye on the pair, and wait; nothing would be lost by going
slowly in so important a matter.

It turned out that this was wisdom, too; for inside of three
weeks Aleck made a wonderful strike which swelled her imaginary
hundred thousand to four hundred thousand of the same quality.
She and Sally were in the clouds that evening. For the first
time they introduced champagne at dinner. Not real champagne,
but plenty real enough for the amount of imagination expended on it.
It was Sally that did it, and Aleck weakly submitted. At bottom both
were troubled and ashamed, for he was a high-up Son of Temperance,
and at funerals wore an apron which no dog could look upon and retain
his reason and his opinion; and she was a W. C. T. U., with all that
that implies of boiler-iron virtue and unendurable holiness. But there
is was; the pride of riches was beginning its disintegrating work.
They had lived to prove, once more, a sad truth which had been proven
many times before in the world: that whereas principle is a great
and noble protection against showy and degrading vanities and vices,
poverty is worth six of it. More than four hundred thousand
dollars to the good. They took up the matrimonial matter again.
Neither the dentist nor the lawyer was mentioned; there was no occasion,