ther had died, comfortably, leaving him with a
completely ruined life.

They were not bad-looking girls, and they had a certain style, too.
That is, Stell and Eva had. Carrie, the middle one, taught school over
on the West Side. In those days it took her almost two hours each way.
She said the kind of costume she required should have been corrugated
steel. But all three knew what was being worn, and they wore it--or
fairly faithful copies of it. Eva, the housekeeping sister, had a
needle knack. She could skim the State Street windows and come away
with a mental photograph of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon.
Heads of departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and
she went home and reproduced them with the aid of a seamstress by the
day. Stell, the youngest, was the beauty. They called her Babe.

Twenty-three years ago one's sisters did not strain at the household
leash, nor crave a career. Carrie taught school, and hated it. Eva
kept house expertly and complainingly. Babe's profession was being the
family beauty, and it took all her spare time. Eva always let her
sleep until ten.

This was Jo's household, and he was the nominal head of it. But it was
an empty title. The three women dominated his life. They weren't
consciously selfish. If you had called them cruel they would have put
you down as mad. When you are the lone brother of three sisters, it
means that you must constantly be calling for, escorting, or dropping
one of them somewhere. Most men of Jo's age were standing before their
mirror of a Saturday night, whistling blithely and abstractedly while
they discarded a blue polka-dot for a maroon tie, whipped off the
maroon for a shot-silk and at the last moment decided against the
shot-silk in favor of a plain black-and-white because she had once said
she preferred quiet ties. Jo, when he should have been preening his
feathers for conquest, was saying:

"Well, my God, I AM hurrying! Give a man time, can't you? I just got
home. You girls been laying around the house all day. No wonder you're
ready."

He took a certain pride in seeing his sisters well dressed, at a time
when he should have been reveling in fancy waistcoats and
brilliant-hued socks, according to the style of that day and the
inalienable right of any unwed male under thirty, in any day. On those
rare occasions when his business necessitated an out-of-town trip, he
would spend half a day floundering abou