It was a manless household. Mrs. Decker, vague, garrulous, and given to
ice-wool shawls, referred to her dead husband, in frequent reminiscence,
as poor Mr. Decker. Mrs. Decker dragged one leg as she
walked--rheumatism, or a spinal affection. Small wonder, then, that
Sophy, the plain, with a gift for hat-making, a knack at eggless
cake-baking, and a genius for turning a sleeve so that last year's style
met this year's without a struggle, contributed nothing to the sag in
the centre of the old twine hammock on the front porch.

That the three girls should marry well, and Sophy not at all, was as
inevitable as the sequence of the seasons. Ella and Grace did not manage
badly, considering that they had only their girlish prettiness and the
twine hammock to work with. But Flora, with her beauty, captured H.
Charnsworth Baldwin. Chippewa gasped. H. Charnsworth Baldwin drove a
skittish mare to a high-wheeled yellow runabout (this was twenty years
ago); had his clothes made at Proctor Brothers in Milwaukee, and talked
about a game called golf. It was he who advocated laying out a section
of land for what he called links, and erecting a club house thereon.

"The section of the bluff overlooking the river," he explained, "is full
of natural hazards, besides having a really fine view."

Chippewa--or that comfortable, middle-class section of it which got its
exercise walking home to dinner from the store at noon, and cutting the
grass evenings after supper--laughed as it read this interview in the
Chippewa _Eagle_.

"A golf course," they repeated to one another, grinning. "Conklin's cow
pasture, up the river. It's full of natural--wait a minute--what