not
very strong."

"Why should you be sorry for Mrs. Denning, Her husband is enormously
rich--she lives in a palace, and has a crowd of men and women servants
to wait upon her--carriages, horses, motor cars, what not, at her
command."

"Yet really, Ruth, she is a most unhappy woman. In that little Western
town from which they came, she was everybody. She ran the churches, and
was chairwoman in all the clubs, and President of the Temperance Union,
and manager of every religious, social, and political festival; and her
days were full to the brim of just the things she liked to do. Her dress
there was considered magnificent; people begged her for patterns, and
regarded her as the very glass of fashion. Servants thought it a great
privilege to be employed on the Denning place, and she ordered her house
and managed her half-score of men and maids with pleasant autocracy.
NOW! Well, I will tell you how it is, NOW. She sits all day in her
splendid rooms, or rides out in her car or carriage, and no one knows
her, and of course no one speaks to her. Mr. Denning has his Wall Street
friends----"

"And enemies," interrupted Judge Rawdon.

"And enemies! You are right, father. But he enjoys one as much as the
other--that is, he would as willingly fight his enemies as feast his
friends. He says a big day in Wall Street makes him alive from head to
foot. He really looks happy. Bryce Denning has got into two clubs, and
his money passes him, for he plays, and is willing to love prudently.
But no one cares about Mrs. Denning. She is quite old--forty-five, I
dare say; and she is stout, and does not wear the colors and style she
ought to wear--none of her things have the right 'look,' and of course
I cannot advise a matron. Then, her fine English servants take her house
out of her hands. She is afraid of them. The butler suavely tries to
inform her; the housekeeper removed the white crotcheted scarfs
and things from the gilded chairs, and I am sure Mrs. Denning had a
heartache about their loss; but she saw that they had also vanished from
Dora's parlor, so she took the hint, and accepted the lesson. Really,
her humility and isolation are pitiful. I am going to ask grandmother
to go and see her. Grandmother might take her to church, and get Dr.
Simpson and Mrs. Simpson to introduce her. Her money and adaptability
would do the rest. There, I have had a good breakfast, though I was
late. It is not always the early bird that gets chicken a