"Those who have money would," I replied. "But how about those who haven't? Don't you think that people of large means ought to make it a rule never to cause any expense whatever to those of their friends and acquaintances who haven't means?"
"Don't say another word!" she exclaimed, seeing my point instantly. "Why, it'd be the worst thing in the world. Out home I've always been careful about those kind of things, but on here I don't know the people and am liable to forget how they're circumstanced. They all seem so prosperous on the surface. I reckon there's a lot of miserable pinching and squinching when the blinds are down."
Cyrus happened to come in just then, and she told him all about it. He looked at me and grew red and evidently tried to say something—probably something that would have shown how poorly he thought of my cheating them all out of the fun. But he restrained himself and said nothing.
Presently he went out and must have gone straight to his father—probably to remonstrate, though I may wrong him—for, after a few minutes, the Senator came.
"My son has just been telling me," he said to me, "and I agree with you entirely. It would be ruinous politically. As it is, if it hadn't been for you we'd never have been able to keep both the official and the fashionable sets in a good humor with us." I never saw him so "flustered" before.
"What are you talking about, pa?" inquired Mrs. Burke.
"About the costume ball you were thinking of giving."
Mrs. Burke smiled. "You'd better go back to your cage," said she. "That's settled and done for long ago."
"Pa" looked more uneasy than his good-natured tone seemed to justify—but, no doubt, he knows when he has put his foot into it. He "faded" from the room. When she heard his study door close "ma" said to me in a complacent voice: "There's nothing like keeping a man always to his side of the fence. When 'pa' began to get rich I saw trouble ahead, for he was showing signs that he was thinking himself right smart better than the common run, and that he was including his wife in the common run. I took Mr. Smartie Burke right in hand. And so, with him it's never been 'I' in this family, but 'we.' And keeping it that way has made Tom lots happier than he would 'a' been lording it over me and having no control on his foolishness anywhere."
What a dear, sensible woman she is! He's got good brains, but if he had as good brains as she has he'd get what he's after and doesn't stand a show for.