And to save his soul Edward could not refrain from answering, “You don’t say so!” He feigned interest in the information that the Hampton Ball Team, owing to an unsatisfactory season, was to change managers next year.  Mr. Wiley possessed the gift of gathering recondite bits of news, he had confidence in his topics and in his manner of dealing with them; and Edward, pretending to be entertained, went so far in his politeness as to ask Mr. Wiley if he had had supper.

“I don’t care if I sample one of Mis’ Bumpus’s doughnuts,” Mr. Wiley would reply politely, reaching out a large hand that gave evidence, in spite of Sapolio, of an intimacy with grease cups and splash pans.  “I guess there’s nobody in this burg can make doughnuts to beat yours, Miss Bumpus.”

If she had only known which doughnut he would take; Hannah sometimes thought she might have been capable of putting arsenic in it.  Her icy silence did not detract from the delights of his gestation.

Occasionally, somewhat to Edward’s alarm, Hannah demanded:  “Where are you taking Lise this evening?”

Mr. Wiley’s wisdom led him to be vague.

“Oh, just for a little spin up the boulevard.  Maybe we’ll pick up Ella Schuler and one or two other young ladies.”

Hannah and Janet knew very well he had no intention of doing this, and Hannah did not attempt to conceal her incredulity.  As a matter of fact, Lise sometimes did insist on a “party.”

“I want you should bring her back by ten o’clock.  That’s late enough for a girl who works to be out.  It’s late enough for any girl.”

“Sure, Mis’ Bumpus,” Wiley would respond easily.

Hannah chafed because she had no power to enforce this, because Mr. Wiley and Lise understood she had no power.  Lise went to put on her hat; if she skimped her toilet in the morning, she made up for it in the evening when she came home from the store, and was often late for supper.  In the meantime, while Lise was in the bedroom adding these last touches, Edward would contemptibly continue the conversation, fingering the Evening Banner as it lay in his lap, while Mr. Wiley helped himself boldly to another doughnut, taking—­as Janet observed—­elaborate precautions to spill none of the crumbs on a brown suit, supposed to be the last creation in male attire.  Behind a plate glass window in Faber Street, belonging to a firm of “custom” tailors whose stores had invaded every important city in the country, and who made clothes for “college” men, only the week before Mr. Wiley had seen this same suit artistically folded, combined with a coloured shirt, brown socks, and tie and “torture” collar—­lures for the discriminating.  Owing to certain expenses connected with Lise, he had been unable to acquire the shirt and the tie, but he had bought the suit in the hope and belief that she would find him irresistible therein.  It pleased him, too, to be taken for a “college” man, and on beholding in the mirror his broadened shoulders and diminished waist he was quite convinced his money had not been spent in vain; that strange young ladies—­to whom, despite his infatuation for the younger Miss Bumpus, he was not wholly indifferent—­would mistake him for an undergraduate of Harvard,—­an imposition concerning which he had no scruples.  But Lise, though shaken, had not capitulated.....