is, and
Hannah did not attempt to conceal her incredulity. As a matter of fact,
Lise sometimes did insist on a "party."

"I want you should bring her back by ten o'clock. That's late enough for
a girl who works to be out. It's late enough for any girl."

"Sure, Mis' Bumpus," Wiley would respond easily.

Hannah chafed because she had no power to enforce this, because Mr.
Wiley and Lise understood she had no power. Lise went to put on her
hat; if she skimped her toilet in the morning, she made up for it in
the evening when she came home from the store, and was often late for
supper. In the meantime, while Lise was in the bedroom adding these last
touches, Edward would contemptibly continue the conversation, fingering
the Evening Banner as it lay in his lap, while Mr. Wiley helped himself
boldly to another doughnut, taking--as Janet observed--elaborate
precautions to spill none of the crumbs on a brown suit, supposed to be
the last creation in male attire. Behind a plate glass window in Faber
Street, belonging to a firm of "custom" tailors whose stores had invaded
every important city in the country, and who made clothes for "college"
men, only the week before Mr. Wiley had seen this same suit artistically
folded, combined with a coloured shirt, brown socks, and tie and
"torture" collar--lures for the discriminating. Owing to certain
expenses connected with Lise, he had been unable to acquire the shirt
and the tie, but he had bought the suit in the hope and belief that she
would find him irresistible therein. It pleased him, too, to be taken
for a "college" man, and on beholding in the mirror his broadened
shoulders and diminished waist he was quite convinced his money had
not been spent in vain; that strange young ladies--to whom, despite
his infatuation for the younger Miss Bumpus, he was not wholly
indifferent--would mistake him for an undergraduate of Harvard,--an
imposition concerning which he had no scruples. But Lise, though shaken,
had not capitulated.....

When she returned to the dining-room, arrayed in her own finery, demure,
triumphant, and had carried off Mr. Whey there would ensue an interval
of silence broken only by the clattering together of the dishes Hannah
snatched up.

"I guess he's the kind of son-in-law would suit you," she threw over her
shoulder once to Edward.

"Why?" he inquired, letting down his newspaper nervously.

"Well, you seem to favour him, to make things as pleasant for him as yo