"hired butler" presided distributing after-dinner gold
spoons, these impressions all dwindled and diminished and took their
insignificant place in the background of the romance she was living
and breathing in Peter's jewel box of an apartment on Thirtieth
Street.

Even to more sophisticated eyes than Eleanor's the place seemed to be
a realized ideal of charm and homeliness. It was one of the older
fashioned duplex apartments designed in a more aristocratic decade for
a more fastidious generation, yet sufficiently adapted to the modern
insistence on technical convenience. Peter owed his home to his
married sister, who had discovered it and leased it and settled it and
suddenly departed for a five years' residence in China with her
husband, who was as she so often described him, "a blooming
Englishman, and an itinerant banker." Peter's domestic affairs were
despatched by a large, motherly Irishwoman, whom Eleanor approved of
on sight and later came to respect and adore without reservation.

Peter's home was a home with a place in it for her--a place that it
was perfectly evident was better with her than without her. She even
slept in the bed that Peter's sister's little girl had occupied, and
there were pictures on the walls that had been selected for her.

She had been very glad to make her escape from the Hutchinson
household. Her "quarrel" with them had made no difference in their
relation to her. To her surprise they treated her with an increase of
deference after her outburst, and every member of the family,
excepting possibly Hugh Hutchinson senior, was much more carefully
polite to her. Margaret explained that the family really didn't mind
having their daughter a party to the experiment of cooperative
parenthood. It appealed to them as a very interesting try-out of
modern educational theory, and their own theories of the independence
of the individual modified their criticism of Margaret's secrecy in
the matter, which was the only criticism they had to make since
Margaret had an income of her own accruing from the estate of the aunt
for whom she had been named.

"It is very silly of me to be sensitive about being laughed at,"
Margaret concluded. "I've lived all my life surrounded by people
suffering from an acute sense of humor, but I never, never, never
shall get used to being held up to ridicule for things that are not
funny to me."

"I shouldn't think you would," Eleanor answered devoutly.

In Peter's h