There was the problem of dinners to relatives, a reception to guests for the proper exploitation of the new Mrs. Dyckman. There was the embarrassment of meeting people who brought their prejudices with their visiting-cards and did not leave their prejudices as they did their cards.
The newspapers had to have their say, and they did not make pleasant reading to any of the Dyckmans. Kedzie took a little comfort from reading what the papers had to say about Mrs. Cheever's divorce, but she found that Jim was unresponsive to her gibes. This did not sweeten her heart toward Charity.
Kedzie was hungry for friends and playmates, but she could not find them among the new acquaintances she made. She saw curiosity in all their eyes, patronage in those who were cordial, and insult in those who were not effusive. She got along famously with the men, but their manner was not quite satisfactory, either. There was a corrosive something in their flattery, a menace in their approach.
There were the horrible experiences when Mrs. Dyckman called on Mrs. Thropp and the worse burlesque when Mrs. Thropp called on Mrs. Dyckman. The servants had a glorious time over it, and Kedzie overheard Mrs. Dyckman's report of the ordeal to her husband. She was angry at Mrs. Dyckman, but angrier still at her mother.
Kedzie's father and mother were an increasing annoyance to Kedzie's pride and her peace. They wanted to get out to Nimrim and make a triumph through the village. And Jim and Kedzie were glad to pay the freight. But once the Thropps had gloated they were anxious to get back again to the flesh-pots of New York.
The financing of the old couple was embarrassing. It did not look right to Kedzie to have the father and mother of Mrs. Dyckman a couple of shabby, poor relations, and Kedzie called it shameful that her father, who was a kind of father-in-law-in-law to the duchess, should earn a pittance as a claim-agent in the matter of damaged pigs and things.
Jim, like all millionaires, had dozens of poor relations and felt neither the right nor the obligation to enrich them all. There is no gesture that grows tiresome quicker than the gesture of shoving the hand into the cash-pocket, bringing it up full and emptying it. There is no more painful disease than money-spender's cramp.
Kedzie learned, too, that to assure her father and mother even so poor an income as five thousand dollars a year would require the setting aside of a hundred thousand dollars at least in gilt-edged securities. She began to have places where she could put a hundred thousand dollars herself. On her neck was one place, for she saw a woman with a dog-collar of that price, and it made Kedzie feel absolutely nude in contrast. She met old Mrs. Noxon with her infamously costly stomacher on, and Kedzie cried that night because she could not have one for her own midriff.
Jim growled, “When you get a stomach as big as Mrs. Noxon's you can put a lamp-post on it.”
She said he was indecent, and a miser besides.