re her
life.

And Nina had "come out." It had cost a great deal, and it was not so
much to introduce her to society as to put a family recognition on a
fact already accomplished, for Nina had brought herself out unofficially
at sixteen. There had been the club ballroom, and a great many flowers
which withered before they could be got to the hospital; and new
clothing for all the family, and a caterer and orchestra. After that,
for a cold and tumultuous winter Mrs. Wheeler had sat up with the
dowagers night after night until all hours, and the next morning had
let Nina sleep, while she went about her household duties. She had aged,
rather, and her determined smile had grown a little fixed.

She was a good woman, and she wanted her children's happiness more than
anything in the world, but she had a faint and sternly repressed
feeling of relief when Nina announced her engagement. Nina did it with
characteristic sangfroid, at dinner one night.

"Don't ring for Annie for a minute, mother," she said. "I want to tell
you all something. I'm going to marry Leslie Ward."

There had been a momentary pause. Then her father said:

"Just a minute. Is that Will Ward's boy?"

"Yes. He's not a boy."

"Well, he'll come around to see me before there's any engagement. Has
that occurred to either of you?"

"Oh, he'll be around. He'd have come to-night, but Howard Moore is
having his bachelor dinner. I hope he doesn't look shot to pieces
to-morrow. These bachelor things--! We'd better have a dinner or
something, mother, and announce it."

There had been the dinner, with a silver loving cup bought for the
occasion, and thereafter to sit out its useless days on the Sheraton
sideboard. And there had been a trousseau and a wedding so expensive
that a small frown of anxiety had developed between Walter Wheeler's
eyebrows and stayed there.

For Nina's passion for things was inherent, persisting after her
marriage. She discounted her birthday and Christmases in advance, coming
around to his office a couple of months before the winter holidays and
needing something badly.

"It's like this, daddy," she would say. "You're going to give me a check
for Christmas anyhow, aren't you? And it would do me more good now. I
simply can't go to another ball."

"Where's your trousseau?"

"It's worn out-danced to rags. And out of date, too."

"I don't understand it, Nina. You and Leslie have a good income. Your
mother and I--"

"You didn't hav