"Don't ring for Annie for a minute, mother," she said. "I want to
tell you all something. I'm going to marry Leslie Ward."

There had been a momentary pause. Then her father said:

"Just a minute. Is that Will Ward's boy?"

"Yes. He's not a boy."

"Well, he'll come around to see me before there's any engagement.
Has that occurred to either of you?"

"Oh, he'll be around. He'd have come to-night, but Howard Moore
is having his bachelor dinner. I hope he doesn't look shot to
pieces to-morrow. These bachelor things--! We'd better have a
dinner or something, mother, and announce it."

There had been the dinner, with a silver loving cup bought for the
occasion, and thereafter to sit out its useless days on the Sheraton
sideboard. And there had been a trousseau and a wedding so expensive
that a small frown of anxiety had developed between Walter Wheeler's
eyebrows and stayed there.

For Nina's passion for things was inherent, persisting after her
marriage. She discounted her birthday and Christmases in advance,
coming around to his office a couple of months before the winter
holidays and needing something badly.

"It's like this, daddy," she would say. "You're going to give me a
check for Christmas anyhow, aren't you? And it would do me more