gang, to the
theatre--Patrick Haney as much of a boy as his grandsons, McArdle alone
being unhappy as well as uneasy.

She went about the shops, buying with reckless hand treasures for the
house in the Springs, and this gave her husband more satisfaction than
any other extravagance, for each article seemed a gage of the permanency
of his home. In support of her mood he urged her to even larger
expenditures. "Buy, buy like a queen," he often commanded, as she mused
upon some choice. "Take the best!"

There was instruction as well as a guilty delight in all this conjuring
with a magic check-book, and Bertha grew in grace and dignity in her
role as hostess. Her circle of acquaintances widened, but the Mosses,
her first friends in the city, were not displaced in her affections. To
them she continued to play the generous fairy in as many pleasant ways
as they would permit. The theatre continued to be her delight, as well
as her school of life, and a box-party followed nearly every dinner. She
was like a child in the catholicity of her appetite, for she devoured
Shakespearian bread, Ibsen roasts, and comic opera cream-puffs with
almost equal gusto--and mentally thrived upon the mixture. To the
outsider she seemed one of the most fortunate women in the world.

And yet every day made her less tolerant of the crippled old man at her
side. She did not pout or sulk or answer him shortly, but she often
forgot him--failed to answer him--not out of petulance or disgust, but
because her mind was busy with other people. Gradually, without
realizing it, she got into the habit of leaving him to amuse himself, as
he best could, for she knew he did not specially care for the pursuits
which gave her the keenest joy. In consequence of this unintentional
neglect he very naturally fell more and more into the hands of the
bar-room spongers who loitered about the hotel corridors. He dreaded
loneliness, and it was to keep his companions about him that he became a
spendthrift in liquors. Sternly and deliberately temperate during his
long career as a gambler, he fell at last into drinking to excess, and
on one unhappy afternoon returned to Bertha quite plainly drunk.

She was both startled and disgusted by this sign of weakness, and he was
not so blinded by the mist of his potations but that he perceived the
shrinking reluctance of her touch as she aided Lucius in lifting him
into the bed. His inert, lumpish form was at the moment hideously
rep