“Well, he'll come around to see me before there's any engagement. Has that occurred to either of you?”
“Oh, he'll be around. He'd have come to-night, but Howard Moore is having his bachelor dinner. I hope he doesn't look shot to pieces to-morrow. These bachelor things—! We'd better have a dinner or something, mother, and announce it.”
There had been the dinner, with a silver loving cup bought for the occasion, and thereafter to sit out its useless days on the Sheraton sideboard. And there had been a trousseau and a wedding so expensive that a small frown of anxiety had developed between Walter Wheeler's eyebrows and stayed there.
For Nina's passion for things was inherent, persisting after her marriage. She discounted her birthday and Christmases in advance, coming around to his office a couple of months before the winter holidays and needing something badly.
“It's like this, daddy,” she would say. “You're going to give me a check for Christmas anyhow, aren't you? And it would do me more good now. I simply can't go to another ball.”
“Where's your trousseau?”
“It's worn out-danced to rags. And out of date, too.”
“I don't understand it, Nina. You and Leslie have a good income. Your mother and I—”
“You didn't have any social demands. And wedding presents! If one more friend of mine is married—”
He would get out his checkbook and write a check slowly and thoughtfully. And tearing it off would say: