Step—put; step—put; step—put.
CHAPTER X
MORNING
The Starkweather mansion was a large dwelling. Built some years before the Civil War, it had been one of the “great houses” in its day, to be pointed out to the mid-nineteenth century visitor to the metropolis. Of course, when the sightseeing coaches came in fashion they went up Fifth Avenue and passed by the stately mansions of the Victorian era, on Madison Avenue, without comment.
Willets Starkweather had sprung from a quite mean and un-noted branch of the family, and had never, until middle life, expected to live in the Madison Avenue homestead. The important members of his clan were dead and gone and their great fortunes scattered. Willets Starkweather could barely keep up with the expenditures of his great household.
There were never servants enough, and Mrs. Olstrom, the very capable housekeeper, who had served the present master’s great-uncle before the day of the new generation, had hard work to satisfy the demands of those there were upon the means allowed her by Mr. Starkweather.
There were rooms in the house—especially upon the topmost floor—into which even the servants seldom went. There were vacant rooms which never knew broom nor duster. The dwelling, indeed, was altogether too large for the needs of Mr. Starkweather and his three motherless daughters.
But their living in it gave them a prestige which nothing else could. As wise as any match-making matron, Willets Starkweather knew that the family’s address at this particular number on Madison Avenue would aid his daughters more in “making a good match” than anything else.