ow,
is nice to me simply because she is going abroad in a month and so it's
safe! Has she offered to introduce me to a single friend of hers?
Well, then, don't! Keep your old friends! I don't want to eat them!"
And for days together she would leave the young widow alone.

But the latter would make pleasant advances, and soon they would be
shopping again. This acquaintance was one of the few bright spots in a
season which for Ethel was full of anxious worries. For it was by no
means easy. Amy had been a shopper who simply could not resist pretty
things, and so her apartment was crowded with furniture and bric-a-brac.
"How much can I get rid of without offending Joe?" asked Ethel. He was
the kind of man who says nothing. He would not object, but he would
feel hurt. It took the most careful probing to find how far she could
safely go. And she was tempted by the shops. In her smart town car,
with plenty of money and with young Mrs. Grewe at her side, it was
almost impossible to resist the adorable things she discovered. "No
wonder Amy bought too much." But there they were, all Amy's
belongings, and to be rid of each table, each chair, each rug, meant
the most careful thinking.

"Nevertheless," she told herself. "That apartment upstairs is to be my
own home."

In the meantime her new occupation was working out wonderfully as an
excuse for not going about in the evenings. She was so dead tired every
night. No need to feign fatigue, it was real. She even had to call in
her physician, in the first "draggy" days of Spring; and he warned her
that she was doing too much, it was too soon after the birth of her
child. She was glad when Joe happened to come in and overhear the
doctor. He became the same old dear to her that he had I been a year
ago. And with eagerness, tired though she was, she took pains every
evening to dress in ways that she knew he liked. And at times it was
almost like a second honeymoon they were having. She used the baby,
too, and Susette; she often persuaded Joe to come home in time for
Susette's supper, or better still for the baby's bath. And all this was
so successful that even when her spring fever was gone she still stayed
at home in the evenings.

But in the meantime, what about friends? "I'm lazy," she thought, "I'm
not facing it! I'm just putting it off--and it's dangerous!" For Joe
was out so much at night. Over half the time he did not get home until
the children were in bed, and often after a