At dinner Mary announced the contents of her letter in the long envelope.  “I have received my appointment as stenographer in the Treasury, and I’m to report for duty on the twentieth.”

It was Aunt Frances who recovered first from the shock.  “Well, if you were my child——­”

Grace, with little points of light in her eyes, spoke smoothly, “If Mary were your child, she would be as dutiful as I am, mother.  But you see she isn’t your child.”

Aunt Frances snorted—­“Dutiful.”

Gordon was glowering.  “It is rank foolishness.”

Mary flared.  “That’s your point of view, Gordon.  You judge me by Constance.  But Constance has always been feminine and sweet—­and I’ve never been particularly feminine, nor particularly sweet.”

Barry followed up her defense.  “I guess Mary knows how to take care of herself, Gordon.”

“No woman knows how to take care of herself,” Gordon was obstinate, “when it comes to the fight with economic conditions.  I should hate to think of Constance trying to earn a living.”

“Gordon, dear,” Constance’s voice appealed, “I couldn’t—­but Mary can—­only I hate to see her do it.”

“I don’t,” said Grace, stoutly.  “I envy her.”

Aunt Frances fixed her daughter with a stern eye.  “Don’t encourage her in her foolishness, Grace,” she said; “each of you should marry and settle down with some nice man.”

“But what man, mother?” Grace, leaning forward, put the question, with an irritating air of doubt.

“There are a half dozen of them waiting.”

“Nice boys!  But a man.  Find me one, mother, and I’ll marry him.”

“The trouble with you and Mary,” Porter informed her, “is that you don’t want a man.  You want a hero.”

Grace nodded.  “With a helmet and plume, and riding on a steed—­that’s my dream—­but mother refuses to let me wander in Arcady where such knights are found.”

“I think,” Constance remarked happily, “that now and then they are found in every-day life, only you and Mary won’t recognize them.”

From the other side her husband smiled at her.  “She thinks I’m one,” he said, and his fine young face was suffused by faint color.  “She thinks I’m one.  I hope none of you will ever undeceive her.”

Under the table Leila’s little hand was slipped into Barry’s big one.  She could not proclaim to the world that she had found her knight, and loved him.

Aunt Frances, very stiff and straight in her jetted dinner gown, resumed, “I wish it were possible to give girls a dose of common sense, as you give them cough syrup.”

“Mother!”

But Aunt Frances, mounted on her grievance, rode it through the salad course.  She had wanted Grace to marry—­her beauty and her family had entitled her to an excellent match.  But Grace was single still, holding her own against all her mother’s arguments, maintaining in this one thing her right to independent action.