"I understand that the party is to be a large general affair, not small and exclusive? In that case, you know, we shall have to invite every one who has called and sent us gifts."
"Impossible! Why, our butcher sent us a gilt-framed Snow-Scene! and Sadie's dressmaker a souvenir spoon!"
"Then at least we must invite every one who has called on me."
"By no means. Wait until you have lived here long enough to have gotten your bearings and you'll see how right Jennie and Sadie and I are in drawing the line so carefully."
Margaret wisely desisted from further discussion of the matter, though she felt troubled by her conviction that she would certainly not find on that list the names of the few women of the town who had really interested her and who were probably "renters" or self-supporting or something else which, by the Leitzel standard, would class them with "dogs and sorcerers." But it was she and Daniel who were giving the party, and even though Jennie and Sadie did keep house for them, she was of course the nominal mistress of her husband's home and responsible for the courtesy or discourtesy extended to their acquaintances; and she did not like the idea of being made to appear a petty snob in the eyes of the few people of New Munich for whose opinion of her she cared. But what could she do about it?
"The people they seem to approve of have been the most vulgar who have called on me," she reflected. "And the few persons of breeding and education I've met here they have flouted. Yet I recognize the delicacy of their position—Jennie's and Sadie's—living here in their brother's house and dependent upon him. I don't want to assert myself in a way to make them feel their dependence. What can I do?"
"Another thing, Margaret," said Daniel in a tone of authority, "I want to ask you not to make yourself common with people beneath you."
"Make myself 'common?'"
"Why, you are as common with my secretary as you are with Mrs. Ocksreider or Mrs. and Miss Miller!"
"I'm 'common?'"