The one thing that would have softened their attitude toward their new relative would have been an unequivocal statement as to the firm financial standing of her family. And on that point the newspaper, though furnished by Daniel himself with the facts, was ominously silent. The conclusion was unmistakable. She was certainly penniless.
It was not greatly to be wondered at that the Leitzels worshipped money. It was money that had done everything for them: it had rescued them from a fearful struggle for a bare existence on a small, heavily mortgaged farm; it had freed them from the grind of slavish labour; from an obscurity that had been bitterly humiliating to the self-esteem and the ambition which was characteristic of every one of them. It was money that had given them power, place, influence; that made their fellowmen treat them with deference and relieved them from the necessity of treating any one else with deference. They knew of no worth in life unpurchasable by money. They did not, therefore, know of their own spiritual pauperism; their abject poverty.
II
The betrothal and impending marriage of Daniel Leitzel was the only topic of discussion that evening at the New Munich Country Club dance. Certainly New Munich had a Country Club. "Up to date in every particular." There was nothing in the way of being smartly fashionable that the town of New Munich lacked. Well, if up to the present it had lacked old families of "distinguished lineage," who, in these commercial days, regarded that kind of thing? Anyway, was not that lack (if lack it had been) now to be supplied by the newcomer, Mrs. Daniel Leitzel?
Not only at the Country Club dance, but wherever two or three were gathered together—at the mid-week Prayer Meeting, at the Woman's Suffrage Headquarters, at the Ladies' Literary Club, at the Episcopal Church Vespers, at the auction bridge given at Congressman Ocksreider's home—Danny Leitzel's betrothal was talked about.
"Just imagine this 'daughter of a thousand earls——'"
"Governors, not earls," corrected Mr. Schaeffer, the whist partner of the first speaker who was Miss Myrtle Deibert, as supper was being served at eleven o'clock on the card tables at Congressman Ocksreider's. "A thousand governors and highbrows—shy-lologists, or something like that—whatever they are!"
"Well, just imagine such a person living at the Leitzels!"
"But you don't suppose Danny's sisters will still live with him after he's married!" exclaimed Mr. Bleichert, the second young man at the table.