Life had not always been so plumply upholstered for old lady Mandle. She
had known its sharp corners and cruel edges. At twenty-three, a strong,
healthy, fun-loving girl, she had married Herman Mandle, a dour man
twenty-two years her senior. In their twenty-five years of married life
together Hattie Mandle never had had a five-cent piece that she could
call her own. Her husband was reputed to be wealthy, and probably was,
according to the standards of that day. There were three children: Etta,
the oldest; a second child, a girl, who died; and Hugo. Her husband's
miserliness, and the grind of the planning, scheming, and contriving
necessary to clothe and feed her two children would have crushed the
spirit of many women. But hard and glum as her old husband was he never
quite succeeded in subduing her courage or her love of fun. The habit of
heart-breaking economy clung to her, however, even when days of plenty
became hers. It showed in little hoarding ways: in the saving of burned
matches, of bits of ribbon, of scraps of food, of the very furniture and
linen, as though, when these were gone, no more would follow.

Ten years after her marriage her husband retired from active business.
He busied himself now with his real estate, with mysterious papers,
documents, agents. He was forever poking around the house at hours when
a household should be manless, grumbling about the waste where there was
none, peering into bread boxes, prying into corners never meant for
masculine eyes. Etta, the girl, was like him, sharp-nosed, ferret-faced,
stingy. The mother and the boy turned to each other. In a wordless way
they grew very close, those two. It was as if they were silently matched
against the father and daughter.

It was a queer household, brooding, sinister, like something created in
a Brontë brain. The two children were twenty-four and twenty-two when
the financial avalanche of '93 thundered across the continent sweeping