n leader. Whether she made any
particular effort to influence her neighbors or not, they could not but
feel the difference in her attitude toward all the various tangible
things that make a woman's life. She was essentially maternal, wanted
to mother all the little living and growing things in the world, wanted
to be with children, and talk of them and study them. And she was
simple and honest in her tastes, and entirely without affectation in
her manner, and she was too great a lady to be either laughed at or
ignored. So Santa Paloma began to ask itself why she did this or that,
and finding her ways all made for economy and comfort and simplicity,
almost unconsciously copied them.

CHAPTER VI

When Mrs. Apostleman invited several of her friends to a formal dinner
given especially for Mrs. Burgoyne everyone realized that the newcomer
was accepted, and the event was one of several in which the women of
Santa Paloma tried with more than ordinary eagerness to outshine each
other. Mrs. Apostleman herself never entered into competition with the
younger matrons, nor did they expect it of her. She gave heavy, rich,
old-fashioned dinners in her own way, in which her servants were
perfectly trained. It was a standing joke among her friends that they
always ate too much at Mrs. Apostleman's house, there were always seven
or eight substantial courses, and she liked to have the plates come
back for more lobster salad or roast turkey. In this, as in all things,
she was a law unto herself.

But for the other women, Mrs. White set the pace, and difficult to keep
they often found it. But they never questioned it. They admired the
richer woman's perfect house-furnishing, and struggled blindly to
accumulate the same number and variety of napkins and fingerbowls,
ramekins and glasses and candlesticks and special forks and special
knives. The first of the month with its bills, became a horror to them,
and they were continually promising their husbands, in all good faith,
that expenses should positively be cut down.

But what use were good resolves; when one might find, the very next
day, that there were no more cherries for the grapefruit, that one had
not a pair of presentable white gloves for the club, or that the
motor-picnic that the children were planning was to cost them five
dollars apiece? To serve grapefruit without cherries, to wear colored
gloves, or no gloves at all to the club, and to substitute some
inexpensive ple