was a distinguishing feature.  He saw with approbation the charming externals with which she surrounded their offspring.  It was a gratification to him to be quite sure that Maida’s hair ribbon would always be fresh and tied perkily, and that Adelaide would be full of dainty little gestures copied from her mother, but he had some doubts as to whether his wonderful Margaret might not be too perfect in herself, and too engrossed with the duties pertaining to perfection to be quite the proper manager of imperfection and immaturity represented by childhood.

“How did you leave the children!” he inquired when they were in their bedroom at the hotel, and he was fitting the yellow satin slippers to his wife’s slender silk shod feet.

“The children were as well as usual.  I told Emma to put them to bed.  Do you think the orchids in the dining-room are the right shade, Wilbur?”

“I am quite sure.  I am glad that you told Emma to put them to bed.”

“I always do.  Mrs. George B. Slade is most unpleasantly puffed up.”

“Why?”

“Oh, because she got Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder to speak to the club.”

“Did she do her stunt well?”

“Well enough.  Mrs. Slade was so pleased, it was really offensive.”

Wilbur Edes had an inspiration.  “The Fay-Wymans,” said he (the Fay-Wymans were the principal guests of their dinner party), “know a lot of theatrical people.  I will see if I can’t get them to induce somebody, say Lydia Greenway, to run out some day; I suppose it would have to be later on, just after the season, and do a stunt at the club.”

“Oh, that would be simply charming,” cried Margaret, “and I would rather have it in the spring, because everything looks so much prettier.  But don’t you think it will be impossible, Wilbur?”

“Not with money as an inducement.”  Wilbur had the pleasant consciousness of an unusually large fee which was sure to be his own before that future club meeting, and he could see no better employment for it than to enable his adored wife to outshine Mrs. George B. Slade.  When in New York engaged in his profession, Wilbur Edes was entirely free from the vortex of Fairbridge, but his wife, with its terrible eddies still agitating her garments, could suck him therein, even in the great city.  He was very susceptible to her influence.

Margaret Edes beamed at her husband as he rose.  “That will make Marion Slade furious,” she said.  She extended her feet.  “Pretty slippers, aren’t they, Wilbur?”

“Charming, my dear.”

Margaret was so pleased that she tried to do something very amiable.

“That was funny, I mean what you said about the Syrian girl at the Dominie’s,” she volunteered, and laughed, without making a crease in her fair little face.  She was really adorable, far more than pretty, leaning back with one slender, yellow-draped leg crossed over the other, revealing the glittering slippers and one silken ankle.