announcement:
"The family gets home to-night, and they will come to call to-morrow."

"Why don't we go to the station to meet them?" I suggested.

To-day I appreciate better than I could then the gentle tact with which
Tom told me his family was strong on "good form", and that the husband's
family calls on the bride first. My husband's family came, and I
realized that I was a mere baby in a new world--a complicated and not
very friendly world, at that. Though they never put it into words, they
made me understand, in their cruel, polite way, that Tom was the hope of
the family, and his sudden marriage to a stranger had been a great
shock, if not more.

The beautiful ease of my husband's women-folk filled me with admiration
and despair. I felt guilty of something. I was queer. Their voices,
the intonation, even the tilt of their chins, seemed to stamp these new
"in-laws" as aristocrats of another race. Yet the same old New England
stock that sired their ancestors produced my father's fathers.

Theirs had stayed in Boston, and had had time to teach their children
grace and refinement and subtleties. Mine fought for their existence in
a new country. And when men and women fight for existence life becomes
very simple.

I felt only my own misery that day. Now I realize that the meeting
between Tom's mother and his wife was a mutual misery. I was crude. No
doubt, to her, I seemed even common. With every one except Tom I seemed
awkward and stupid. Poor mother-in-law!

When she rose to go, I saw her to her carriage. She was extremely
insistent that I should not. But this was Tom's mother, and I was
determined to leave no friendly act undone. At home it would have been
an offense not to see the company to their wagon. Even in Madison we
would have escorted a caller to his carriage.

Again it was the coachman who with one chill look warned me that I had
sinned.

Before Tom came home that afternoon he called on his mother, so no
explanations from me were necessary. He knew it all, and doubtless much
more than had escaped me. Like the princely gentleman he always was,
the poor boy tried to soften that after-noon's blows by saying social
customs were stupid and artificial and I knew all the important things
in life. The other few little things and habits of his world he could
easily tell me.

Few--and little! There were thousands, and they loomed bigger each day.
Moreover, Tom did not tell me. Eithe