got married she wanted Dedham china, and just a plain,
glass bowl for goldfish, Wolf nodded, but he would have nodded just as
placidly if she had wanted a Turkish corner and bead portieres. And
to-night when she asserted that she wouldn't be Leslie Melrose for
anything in the world, Wolf asked in simple wonderment why she should
be.

"Imagine, a maid came to take those big girls home, Wolf! They can speak
French," Norma confided. Wolf did not look for coherence from her, and
took the two statements on their face value. "Now, I know I'm not
pretty," she continued, following, as was usual with her, some obscure
line of thought, "but I'm prettier than Doris Alexander, and she had her
picture in the paper!"

"Who broke it to you that you're not pretty?" Wolf asked.

"Well, I _know_ I'm not!" Norma jumped along at his side for a few
minutes, eyeing him expectantly, but Wolf's mind was honestly busy with
this assertion, and he did not speak. Wasn't she pretty? Girls had funny
standards. "You know," she resumed, "you'd hate a girl like Leslie
Melrose, Wolf!"

"Would I?"

"Oh, you'd loathe her. But I'll tell you who you _would_ like," Norma
added, in a sudden burst. "You'd love Mr. Liggett!"

"Why should I?" Wolf asked, in some surprise.

"Oh, because he's nice--he's very good-looking, and he has such a
pleasant voice, as if he knew everything, but wasn't a bit conceited!"
Norma said. "And he picks out books for his wife, and when I try to tell
him something about them, he always knows lots more. You know, in a
pleasant, careless sort of way, not a bit as if he was showing off. And
I'll tell you what he did. Miss Drake was showing him a pottery bowl
one day, and she dropped it, and she told me he sort of caught at it
with his hand, and he said to Mr. Biretta, 'I've very stupidly broken
this--just put it on my bill, will you?' Of course," Norma added,
vivaciously, "old B. G. immediately said that it was nothing at all, but
_you know_ what Miss Drake would have caught, if _she'd_ broken it!"

Perhaps Wolf did, but he was thinking at the moment that the family baby
was very cunning, with her bright eyes and indignant mouth. He stopped
her before a vaudeville house, in a flare of bright light.

"Want to go in?"

"Oh, Wolf! Would Aunt Kate care? Oh, Wolf, _let's_!"

There was absolute ecstasy in her eyes as they went through the
enchanted doorway and up the rising empty foyer toward the house. It was
nine o'clock; the