always a mortgage or sale in progress. Sometimes a lucrative as well as
love-marriage temporarily increased the primal funds, but more often the
opposite was the case.

The Deshas, like all true Southerners, believed that love was the only
excuse for marriage; just as most Northerners believe that labor is the
only excuse for living. And so the colonel, with no business incentive,
acumen, or adaptability, and with the inherited handicap of a luxurious
living standard, made a brave onslaught on his patrimony.

What the original estate was, or to what extent the colonel had
encroached upon it, Sue never rightly knew. She had been brought up
in the old faith that a Southerner is lord of the soil, but as she
developed, the fact was forced home upon her that her father was not
materialistic, and that ways and means were.

Twice yearly their Kentucky estate yielded an income. As soon as she
understood affairs, Sue took a stand which could not be shaken, even if
the easy-going mooning colonel had exerted himself to that extent. She
insisted upon using one-half the yearly income for household expenses;
the other the colonel could fritter away as he chose upon his
racing-stable and his secondary hobby--an utterly absurd stamp
collection.

Only each household knows how it meets the necessity of living. It is
generally the mother and daughter, if there be one, who comprise the
inner finance committee. Men are only Napoleons of finance when the
market is strong and steady. When it becomes panicky and fluctuates and
resolves itself into small unheroic deals, woman gets the job. For the
world is principally a place where men work for the pleasures and