clerk trying to cut a
dash like that! As if every one could not guess just where had gone
that missing sum of money.

And so the town talked and wagged its head, and back in the tiny house
in the midst of its unkept lawn and garden sat the angry, frightened,
and appalled Herbert Wheeler, and Jessica, his wife.

In vain did the Wheelers point out that the automobile was a gift. In
vain did they bare to doubting eyes the whole pitiful poverty of their
daily life. The town refused to see or to understand; in the town's
eyes was the vision of the Wheeler automobile flying through the
streets with selfishly empty seats; in the town's nose was the hateful
smell of gasoline. Nothing else signified.

To the bank examiners, however, something else did signify. But it
took their sworn statement, together with the suicide of Cashier Jewett
(the proved defaulter), to convince the town; and even then the town
shook its head and said:

"Well, it might have been that automobile, anyhow!"

The Wheelers sold their elephant--their motor-car.

"Yes, I think we 'd better sell it," agreed Jessica tearfully, when her
husband made the proposition. "Of course the car did n't cost us
anything, but we--"

"Cost us anything!" cut in Herbert Wheeler wrathfully. "Cost us
anything! Why, it's done nothing but cost from the day it smashed
those two eggs in the kitchen to the day it almost smashed my
reputation at the bank. Why, Jessica, it's cost us everything--food,
clothing, fun, friends, and almost life itself! I think we 'll sell
that automobile."

And they sold it.

A Patron of Art

Mrs. Livingstone adored art--Art with a capital A, not the kind whose
sign-manual is a milking-stool or a beribboned picture frame. The
family had lived for some time in a shabby-genteel house on Beacon
Hill, ever since, indeed, Mrs. Livingstone had insisted on her
husband's leaving the town of his birth and moving to Boston--the
center of Art (according to Mrs. Livingstone).

Here she attended the Symphony Concerts (on twenty-five cent tickets),
and prattled knowingly of Mozart and Beethoven; and here she listened
to Patti or Bernhardt from the third balcony of the Boston Theater. If
she attended an exhibit of modern paintings she saw no beauty in
pictured face or flower, but longed audibly for the masterpieces of
Rubens and of Titian; and she ignored the ordinary books and
periodicals of the day, even to the newspapers, and adorned