CHAPTER I



SALLY GIVES A PARTY



1

Sally looked contentedly down the long table. She felt happy at last.
Everybody was talking and laughing now, and her party, rallying after an
uncertain start, was plainly the success she had hoped it would be. The
first atmosphere of uncomfortable restraint, caused, she was only too
well aware, by her brother Fillmore's white evening waistcoat, had worn
off; and the male and female patrons of Mrs. Meecher's select
boarding-house (transient and residential) were themselves again.

At her end of the table the conversation had turned once more to the
great vital topic of Sally's legacy and what she ought to do with it.
The next best thing to having money of one's own, is to dictate the
spending of somebody else's, and Sally's guests were finding a good deal
of satisfaction in arranging a Budget for her. Rumour having put the sum
at their disposal at a high figure, their suggestions had certain
spaciousness.

"Let me tell you," said Augustus Bartlett, briskly, "what I'd do, if I
were you." Augustus Bartlett, who occupied an intensely subordinate
position in the firm of Kahn, Morris and Brown, the Wall Street brokers,
always affected a brisk, incisive style of speech, as befitted a man in