``Well, you didn't get any of MY money,'' laughed
Presbury. ``But I suppose pretty much everybody
else in the country must have contributed.''

General Siddall smiled. Mildred wondered whether
the points of his mustache and imperial would crack
and break of, if he should touch them. She noted that
his hair was roached absurdly high above the middle
of his forehead and that he was wearing the tallest heels
she had ever seen. She calculated that, with his hair
flat and his feet on the ground, he would hardly come
to her shoulder--and she was barely of woman's
medium height. She caught sight of his hands--the
square, stubby hands of a working man; the fingers
permanently slightly curved as by the handle of shovel
and pick; the skin shriveled but white with a ghastly,
sickening bleached white, the nails repulsively manicured
into long white curves. ``If he should touch
me, I'd scream,'' she thought. And then she looked at
Presbury--and around her at the evidences of enormous wealth.

The general--she wondered where he had got that
title--led her mother in to dinner, Presbury gave her
his arm. On the way he found opportunity to mutter:

``Lay it on thick! Flatter the fool. You can't
offend him. Tell him he's divinely handsome--a Louis
Fourteen, a Napoleon. Praise everything--napkins,
tablecloth, dishes, food. Rave over the wine.''