"She's some swell," said Mrs. Jackson. "Daughter of the late Archibald Rutherford, of Hastings-on-the-Hudson."
"That don't mean anything. The way they write it makes it look aristocratic. Rutherford!—he might have been a butcher! And Hastings-on-the-Hudson! Well, they have butchers there as well as Astors!"
"Mebbe you're right."
"I'll bet you a new dress Skinner'll be after me to-day," said Jackson, folding his newspaper and preparing to leave for his office. "Trust your Uncle Dudley here—I know."
The very first words that greeted Jackson that night when he reached home were, "I get the dress, don't I?"
"How do you know?"
"Skinner didn't get after you to-day. Look!"
Mrs. Jackson held up the evening paper and read aloud. "'A belated honeymoon—that's what we're here for more than anything else,' said Mr. William Manning Skinner, of McLaughlin & Perkins, Inc., of New York, to a reporter this afternoon. The Skinners had just returned from a spin over beyond Minneapolis with the J. Matthews Wilkinsons—"
"The devil you say!" said Jackson, reaching over and taking the paper. "Aw!" He chucked the paper aside. "That don't establish their social status any more than living in Hastings-on-the-Hudson or being a Rutherford. It don't amount to anything. It's just business. Fellows like Wilkinson, when some outsider is n't quite good enough socially and they want to swell his head without committing themselves, take him in their car or to the club. In that way they save their business faces without sacrificing their social faces. I know," he growled.
"But how did he get in with the Wilkinsons? They have n't any business."