"Very good, ma'am," and touching his cap respectfully, he took from the limousine the heavy fur laprobe and hastened to ring the doorbell for his mistress.
Halfway to her front door Mrs. Whitney paused to scan the outward appearance of her home. The large, Colonial, brick double house, with lights partly showing behind handsomely curtained windows, looked the embodiment of comfort, but Mrs. Whitney heaved a sharp sigh of discontent. The surroundings were not pleasing to her. Again and again she had pleaded with her husband to give up the old house and move into a more fashionable neighborhood. But with the tenacity which easy-going men sometimes exhibit, Winslow Whitney clung to the home of his ancestors. It had descended from father to son for generations, and finally to him, the last of the direct male line. Although business had encroached and noisy electric cars passed his door, and even government buildings dwarfed the impressive size of the old mansion, he declined to give up his home, stating that he had been born there and there he would die.
"Very well, you and Providence can settle the point between you, Dad," answered Kathleen, his only child, who had been brought in to use her persuasive powers upon her irate parent. "But as long as mother and I have to inhabit this old shell you must, simply must, put new works inside her."
And Whitney, with the generosity which marked his every action to those he loved, rehabilitated and remodeled the mansion until it finally rivaled in up-to-date completeness the more ornate homes of the newly rich in the fashionable Northwest.
"Has Miss Kathleen returned?" asked Mrs. Whitney, handing her wraps to the breathless Vincent, who had hurried to answer the chauffeur's imperious ring.
"No, ma'am."
"When she does return, tell her that I wish to see her."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Is Mr. Whitney in his studio?"
"Yes, ma'am. Shall I send Julie to you?"