"Burt led Cornelia down the aisle."
Kittie came around late one afternoon to see her mother. "Do you know, George," she said to her brother, "that Eugene is going to give up our pew at St. Asaph's? Can you imagine why?"
He had heard and read a good deal in his lifetime about the fine penetration of feminine intuition; he wondered why feminine intuition always failed when it came up for application to business matters. The pretty, high-held female heads that would droop in shame if they could come to learn the how and wherefore of their own costly bedeckings! Poor innocent Kittie—sitting there and twirling in unsuspecting surprise the sparkling novelties that encircled her fingers, and never caring or thinking about the means by which they had come to be there!
The principal instruments in McDowell's settlement with the Ogden estate were certain promissory notes and certain warranty deeds—warranty, after quit-claims had been refused; and Ogden found himself in possession of his brother-in-law's signature on several bits of paper which he hoped might realize their full value when the time came, and also of two or three largish tracts of suburban property in which the general public interest seemed rather diminishing than increasing. McDowell saved the best here, just as he had managed to secure the best of his father-in-law's estate for his wife. In the original division—fair, according to appraised values—his knowledge of tendencies of growth had put into his wife's third almost everything that was likely to show a quick increase in price. George took his notes and his lands, and the task of turning them into money; and he left to Kittie an unimpaired trust and confidence in her own husband.
The matter of a house shared his thoughts, along with the McDowell business—an October wedding, a week for a trip, and then the beginning of housekeeping on the first of November in a home of their own.
"You want to see Mrs. Cass," Floyd had told him; "she fixed us up when we first came out here."
"Who is she?"
"A clever little woman who makes a sort of specialty of North-side houses. She has got desk-room somewhere upstairs—sixteenth or seventeenth. She married badly—her husband doesn't do anything. She began by renting friends' houses to other friends, and has kept on until she has worked up quite a business. In such a big town as this has got to be you need to go to a specialist for almost everything. You might take in the whole lot of those big house-renting agencies and never get satisfied."
The office of the Massachusetts Brass Company was as much a social exchange as ever. Jessie frequently came down with Mrs. Floyd and Ann and Claudia, and George would sometimes step up to see her for a few minutes during his noonings. Mrs. Floyd looked upon the meetings indulgently enough, but Ann seemed to hold against Ogden a deeply-seated grudge.
She had been considerably embarrassed in the matter of her special assessments, and she had as much feeling against George as against McDowell himself. Her efforts to fortify and to recoup herself had led her into other fields of business, and she was now spending a good part of every forenoon in the neighborhood of the Board of Trade. Thus far she had not been so successful as to lessen the grudge.