She gave heavy, rich, old-fashioned dinners in her own way, in which
her servants were perfectly trained. It was a standing joke among
her friends that they always ate too much at Mrs. Apostleman's
house, there were always seven or eight substantial courses, and she
liked to have the plates come back for more lobster salad or roast
turkey. In this, as in all things, she was a law unto herself.

But for the other women, Mrs. White set the pace, and difficult to
keep they often found it. But they never questioned it. They admired
the richer woman's perfect house-furnishing, and struggled blindly
to accumulate the same number and variety of napkins and
fingerbowls, ramekins and glasses and candlesticks and special forks
and special knives. The first of the month with its bills, became a
horror to them, and they were continually promising their husbands,
in all good faith, that expenses should positively be cut down.

But what use were good resolves; when one might find, the very next
day, that there were no more cherries for the grapefruit, that one
had not a pair of presentable white gloves for the club, or that the
motor-picnic that the children were planning was to cost them five
dollars apiece? To serve grapefruit without cherries, to wear
colored gloves, or no gloves at all to the club, and to substitute
some inexpensive pleasure for the ride was a course that never
occurred to Mrs. Carew, that never occurred to any of her friends.
Mrs. Carew might have a very vague idea of her daughter's spiritual
needs, she might be an entire stranger to the delicately adjusted
and exquisitely susceptible entity that was the real Jeanette, but
she would have gone hungry rather than have Jeanette unable to wear
white shoes to Sunday School, rather than tie Jeanette's braids with
ribbons that were not stiff and new. She was so entirely absorbed in