mysteriously: "'Y gory--the old man's got some ginger in him yet--eh?"
and bustled away with a card in his hands containing the names of the
invited guests, checking the Perrys from the list as he went.

As Captain Morton rounded the corner of the veranda and came into the
out-of-door dining room, he found Margaret Van Dorn, sitting at a table
by a window with Ahab Wright--flowing white side whiskers and white
necktie inviolate and pristine in their perfection. Ahab was clearly
confused when the Captain sailed into the room. For there was a
breeziness about the Captain's manner, and although Ahab respected the
Captain's new wealth, still his years of poverty and the meanness of his
former calling as a peddler of insignificant things, made Ahab Wright
feel a certain squeamishness when he had to receive Captain Morton upon
the term which, in Ahab's mind, a man of so much money should be
received.

Mrs. Van Dorn was using her eyes on Ahab. Perhaps they cast the spell.
She was leaning forward with her chin in her hands, with both elbows on
the table, and Ahab Wright, of the proud, prosperous and highly
respectable firm of Wright & Perry, was in much the mental and moral
attitude of the bird when the cat creeps up to the tree-trunk. He was
not unhappy; not terrorized--just curious and rather resistless, knowing
that if danger ever came he could fly. And Mrs. Van Dorn, who had tired
of the toys at hand, was adventuring rather aimlessly into the cold blue
eyes of Ahab, to see what might be in them.

"For many years," she was saying, and pronounced it "yee-ahs," having
remembered at the moment to soften her "r's," "I have been living on a
highah plane wheyah one ignoahs the futuah and foahgets the pahst. On
this plane one rises to his full capacity of soul strength, without the
hampah of remoahs or the terror of a vindictive Providence."

She might as well have been reciting the alphabet backwards so far as
Ahab understood or cared what she said. He was fascinated by her
resemblance to a pink and white marshmallow--rather over-powdered. But
she was still fortifying herself from that little black box in the
farthest corner in the bottom drawer of her dresser--and fortifying
herself with two brown pellets instead of one. So she ogled Ahab Wright
by way of diversion, and sat in the recesses of her soul and wondered
what she would say next.

The Captain pulling his panama off made a tremendous bow as Margaret was
saying: "Thos