pocket. "You can't take it with you. I wasn't born with it--mama and
I were as poor as any--you'll forgive me, Stella, I know, for
speaking of her. I got enough heart to love you both. 'Oh, mama!' I
said, and she dying, 'if you only won't go, I'll give you gold to
eat.'"

Curiously, as Linda grew older, the consciousness of her stepfather
as an absurd fat little man dwindled; she lost all sense of his
actual person; and, as the influence of her mother slipped from her
life, the mental conception of Mr. Moses Feldt deepened. She thought
about him a great deal and very seriously; the things he said, the
warm impact of his being, vibrated in her memory. He had the effect
on her of the music of Christopher Gluck--the effect of a pure fine
chord.

Pansy she now thought of with a faint contempt: she was rapidly
growing thick-waisted and heavy, and she was engaged to a dull young
man not rich enough to be interesting. They sat about in frank
embraces and indulged in a sentimental speech that united Judith and
Linda in common oppression.

There were, not infrequently, gatherings of the Feldts at dinner, a
noisy good-tempered uproar of a great many voices speaking at once;
extraordinary quantities of superlative jewels and dresses of
superfine textures; but the latter, Linda thought, were too vivid in
pattern or color for the short full maternal figures they often
adorned. But no one, it seemed, considered himself ageing or even,
in spite of the most positive indications, aged. The wives with
faded but fashionable hair and animated eyes in spent faces talked
with vigorous raillery about the "boys," who, it might have happened,