"radical" sister of hers
were a distinct social asset among her giddy friends uptown. For even
Laura's friends, her father learned with astonishment, had acquired quite
an appetite for men and women with ideas--the more "radical," the better.
But the way Laura used this word at times made Roger's blood run cold. She
was vivid in her approval of her sister's whole idea, as a scheme of
wholesale motherhood which would give "a perfectly glorious jolt" to the
old-fashioned home with its overworked mothers who let their children
absorb their days.

"As though having children and bringing them up," she disdainfully
declared, "were something every woman must do, whether she happens to like
it or not, at the cost of any real growth of her own!"

And smilingly she hinted at impending radical changes in the whole relation
of marriage, of which she was hearing in detail at a series of lectures to
young wives, delivered on Thursday mornings in a hotel ball-room.

What the devil was getting into the town? Roger frowned his deep dislike.
Here was Laura with her chicken's mind blithely taking her sister's
thoughts and turning them topsy-turvy, to make for herself a view of life
which fitted like a white kid glove her small and elegant "menage." And
although her father had only inklings of it all, he had quite enough to
make him irate at this uncanny interplay of influences in his family. Why
couldn't the girls leave each other alone?

* * * * *

Early in the winter, Edith, too, had entered in. It had taken Edith just
one glance into the bride's apartment to grasp Laura's whole scheme of
existence.

"Selfish, indulgent and abnormal," was the way she described it. She and
Bruce were dining with Roger that night. "I wash my hands of the whole
affair," continued Edith curtly. "So long as she doesn't want my help, as
she has plainly made me feel, I certainly shan't stand in her way."

"You're absolutely right," said her father.

"Stick to it," said Bruce approvingly.

But Edith did not stick to it. In her case too, as the weeks wore on, those
subtle family ties took hold and made her feel the least she could do was
"to keep up appearances." So she and Bruce dined with the bride and groom,
and in turn had them to dinner. And these dinners, as Bruce confided to
Roger, were occasions no man could forget.

"They come only about once a month," he said in a tone of pathos, "but it
seems as though barely