me useless and frivolous as I am!--than Gertrude or Florence or
Winifred Gregory! Why, when Floss was married, Dad, Gertrude played
the piano, for music, and for refreshments they had raspberry ice-
cream and chocolate layer cake!"

"Well, I like chocolate layer cake," observed her father mildly. "I
thought that was a very pretty wedding; the sisters in their light
dresses--"

"Dimity dresses at a wedding!" Alexandra reproached him, round-eyed.
"And they are so boisterously proud of the fact that they live on
their father's salary," she went on, arranging her own father's hair
fastidiously; "it's positively offensive the way they bounce up to
change plates and tell you how to make the neck of mutton
appetizing, or the heart of a cow, or whatever it is! And their
father pushes the chairs back, Dad, and helps roll up the napkins--
I'd die if you ever tried it!"

"But they all work, too, don't they?"

"Work? Of course they work! And every cent of it goes into the bank.
Winnie and Florence are buying gas shares, and Gertrude means to
have a year's study in Europe, if you please!"

"That doesn't sound very terrible," said Kane Salisbury, smiling.
But some related thought darkened his eyes a moment later. "You
wouldn't have much gas stock if I was taken, Pussy," said he.

"No, darling, and let that be a lesson to you not to die!" his
daughter said blithely. "But I could work, Dad," she added more