just so—­and Paul have our house built little and plain, so it won’t be so much work to take care of it and keep it clean.  I would so much rather look after it myself than to have him kill himself making money so I can hire maids that you can’t—­you say yourself you can’t—­and never having any time to see him.  Perhaps if we did, other people might, and we’d all have more time to like things that make us nicer to like.

And when her sister tried to comfort her she continued: 

’You do see what I mean!  You see how dreadful it is to look forward to just that—­being so desperately troubled over things that don’t really matter—­and—­and perhaps having children, and bringing them to the same thing—­when there must be so many things that do matter!’

Then, to show how perfectly her sister understood, the author makes that wise and perceptive woman exclaim: 

    ’Mercy!  Dr. Melton’s right!  She’s perfectly wild with nerves! 
    We must get her married as soon as ever we can!’

Lydia gives a reception.  Here is part of the description: 

Standing as they were, tightly pressed in between a number of different groups, their ears were assaulted by a disjointed mass of stentorian conversation that gave a singular illusion as if it all came from one inconceivably voluble source, the individuality of the voices being lost in the screaming enunciation which, as Mrs. Sandworth had pointed out, was a prerequisite of self-expression under the circumstances.

They heard:  ’For over a month and the sleeves were too see you again at Mrs. Elliott’s I’m pouring there from four I’ve got to dismiss one with plum-colored bows all along five dollars a week and the washing out and still impossible!  I was there myself all the time and they neither of thirty-five cents a pound for the most ordinary ferns and red carnations was all they had, and we thought it rather skimpy under the brought up in one big braid and caught down with at Peterson’s they were pink and white with—­’ ...  ’Oh, no, Madeleine! that was at the Burlingame’s.’  Mrs. Sandworth took a running jump into the din and sank from her brother’s sight, vociferating:  ’The Petersons had them of old gold, don’t you remember, with little—­’

The doctor, worming his way desperately through the masses of femininity, and resisting all attempts to engage him in the local fray, emerged at length into the darkened hall where the air was, as he told himself in a frenzied flight of imagination, less like a combination of a menagerie and a perfume shop.  Here, in a quiet corner, sat Lydia’s father alone.  He held in one hand a large platter piled high with wafer-like sandwiches, which he was consuming at a Gargantuan rate, and as he ate, he smiled to himself.

    ‘Well, Mr. Ogre,’ said the doctor, sitting down beside him
    with a gasp of relief; ’let a wave-worn mariner into your den,
    will you?’