“Dan Birge give her pa an overcoat with real Astrakhan collar and cuffs on it and you never see him now without he’s got a cigar stuck in his mouth—do you think it looks well for a minister? Some say they don’t like it. Lorraine’s got a la va-leer necklace and a bracelet watch and a diamond ring besides her engagement ring and she hires a woman to wash and clean.... She better go slow or the money will build her right up. I remember how she washed every mite of clothes she and her pa had.”
“What about their electric cleaner, that’s pretty high-toned? And she had finger bowls, yes, finger bowls when the out-of-town men took dinner there. Ali Baba says they’re going to buy a seven-passenger car—of course it’s nobody’s business and they certainly do a lot of good but they better be careful or they will find themselves so up in G that there would be no living with them ... my Milly says Dan Birge is going to make his clerks wear black dresses with white collars—now did you ever! I guess Lia Fine and Mercedes Rains won’t. Lia just got herself a red alpaca made with white braid—now what does Dan want to go and do such things for?”
“I dunno, anybody that wanted to marry Thurley Precore is likely to try ’most anything,” the subject here changing to Thurley and her rumored fame, the great event concerning Abby Clergy’s recovery and adoption of Thurley.
So Dan and Lorraine developed a pleasant politeness in their personal relationships as if they had been married a great many years and, perforce, discovered that to be polite was the easiest way to proceed!
Nor would it be quite fair to say that, in time, Dan did not become used to his well ordered home and excellent meals, cooked to please himself first and others afterwards, the even-tempered, pretty wife who always smiled when he smiled and who would absent herself whenever she suspected that he wanted to be alone, to rummage in the den in masculine disorder, using a cushion for his feet as well as his head or to go into the pantry in trail of half a pie and ruthlessly crumb the parlor rugs while he ate it, listening to his favorite rag-time roll on the player piano. Dan was unconscious of the heinous offense committed, because no complaint was ever made. So surely as Lorraine knew that Thurley ruled in her husband’s heart, so surely did Dan rule in Lorraine’s heart, and she had schooled herself in ways of becoming essential to his comfort if not to his affections.
Dan’s clothes were mended, never a rip nor tear nor missing button was in evidence. If he was late for dinner, “It keeps warm so nicely in that jewel of an oven,” or if he ’phoned at the last moment that he would not be home, the telephone operator, June Myers, was forced to report that Lorraine said as sweetly as if she was being asked to a party, “Oh, surely, Dan, I understand—well, have a good time, won’t you?”
“Little mother-drudge” was Ali Baba’s name for her when he and Betsey would argue with Hopeful as to the situation. Hopeful, true to her name, tried to convince herself and every one else that joy reigned in the new house with the iron deer guarding the grass plot, that things were better as they were. But Ali Baba and Betsey gave battle that Thurley was the girl Dan loved and Lorraine was merely making the best of it.
They “went out” as befitted young married people and entertained in turn. But Dan paid no heed to Lorraine’s friends. Perhaps he was conscious of their thoughts. He managed to stay away whenever Lorraine had in “a bunch” and when they attended dancing parties or automobile picnics, he always left the women and drifted with the men to smoke or talk business even when the men would have chosen to play a little.
Dan was determined to keep up the deceit to himself as much as to Lorraine. He gave her all she asked for—but he never thought of a surprise, a reward, a consolation posy when rain prevented a drive or a bruised finger was the result of trying to hammer a nail in straight. None of the tender trifles fell to her lot. And the old, fiery Dan, who was “bound to be hung,” as the village had prophesied, went his way in his own fashion, brooking neither interference nor questioning.
When the new and high-priced talking machine was sent up to the house the day before Christmas, Lorraine had hesitated before she read the titles of the records. She fully expected to see “Sung by Thurley Precore” on the greater share of them. But Dan had chosen with stoic consideration and Thurley’s voice was never recreated to fill their rooms with glorious but unwelcome sound.