“It would make a good room for the Common Council,” Henderson suggested.  “Wouldn’t it be prettier hung with silken arras figured with a chain of dancing-girls?  Dear me, I don’t know what to do.  Rodney, you must put your mind on it.”

“Might line it with gold plate.  I’ll make arrangements so that you can draw on the Bank of England.”

Margaret looked hurt.  “But you told me, dear, not to spare anything —­that we would have the finest house in the city.  I’m sure I sha’n’t enjoy it unless you want it.”

“Oh, I want it,” resumed Henderson, good-humoredly.  “Go ahead, little wife.  We shall pull through.”

“Women beat me,” Henderson confessed to Uncle Jerry next day.  “They are the most economical of beings and the most extravagant.  I’ve got to look round for an extra million somewhere today.”

“Yes, there is this good thing about women,” Uncle Jerry responded, with a twinkle in his eyes, “they share your riches just as cheerfully as they do your poverty.  I tell Maria that if I had the capacity for making money that she has for spending it I could assume the national debt.”

To have the finest house in the city, or rather, in the American newspaper phrase, in the Western world, was a comprehensible ambition for Henderson, for it was a visible expression of his wealth and his cultivated taste.  But why Margaret should wish to exchange her dainty and luxurious home in Washington Square for the care of a vast establishment big enough for a royal court, my wife could not comprehend.  But why not?  To be the visible leader in her world, to be able to dispense a hospitality which should surpass anything heretofore seen, to be the mistress and autocrat of an army of servants, with ample room for their evolution, in a palace whose dimensions and splendor should awaken envy and astonishment—­would this not be an attraction to a woman of imagination and spirit?

Besides, they had outgrown the old house.  There was no longer room for the display, scarcely for the storage, of the works of art, the pictures, the curiosities, the books, that unlimited money and the opportunity of foreign travel had collected in all these years.  “We must either build or send our things to a warehouse,” Henderson had long ago said.  Among the obligations of wealth is the obligation of display.  People of small means do not allow for the expansion of mind that goes along with the accumulation of property.  It was only natural that Margaret, who might have been contented with two rooms and a lean-to as the wife of a country clergyman, should have felt cramped in her old house, which once seemed a world too large for the country girl.

“I don’t see how you could do with less room,” Carmen said, with an air of profound conviction.  They were looking about the house on its last uninhabited day, directing the final disposition of its contents.  For Carmen, as well as for Margaret, the decoration and the furnishing of the house had been an occupation.  The girl had the whim of playing the part of restrainer and economizer in everything; but Henderson used to say, when Margaret told him of Carmen’s suggestions, that a little more of her economy would ruin him.