He noticed that his wife was developing a disdain of the public conveyances; a carriage was sometimes required of afternoons, and invariably of evenings when dances or theatre-going might be the matter in hand. She was also cultivating her taste for flowers; she had employed them rather lavishly at her receptions (in conjunction with her mandolin-players), and her appreciation of them kept equal pace with the advancing coldness of the weather and their own advancing cost. She also betrayed a ravenous taste for the exasperating superfluities of house-furnishing, and his bills for things needful were attended by a train of little accounts for things quite worse than useless.
"Oh, well, we shall be fitted out pretty soon," he sighed; and he saw his studious face reflected from among the cluttered _bibelots_ of his mantelpiece.
The point of completion as regarded the interior was finally reached, and his wife's intentions as to the exterior presently developed. She accompanied him out into the vestibule one morning, and stood at the head of the steps to bid him good-by.
"These doors are awfully shabby and old-fashioned," she declared. "Don't you suppose the landlord would put in new ones?"
"I'm quite sure he wouldn't. I wouldn't in his place."
"Well, we have taken this house for a year and a half, and are likely to take it again for a year or two longer. Why couldn't we fix things up ourselves? The entrance counts more, really, than anything else."
"Yes, indeed. If Mary Munson is coming to see me, I want things as nice as they have everything."
Mary Munson was of the Louisville family that had entertained Jessie Bradley at Old Point Comfort. It presently transpired that she was under like obligations to many other acquaintances of her girlhood.
"I must pay them up," she explained. "Besides, I need company--all alone here during the day, and mamma away off there in the country."
The succession of Mary Munsons lasted, indeed, through into spring. Blowers, carriages, and matinee-tickets doubled up finely, and the hideous mien of the caterer was seen in connection with frequent lunches.
"I spoke to Mr. Atwater to-day about the front of the house," she said to him one evening towards the close of dinner. "Maggie didn't quite get around to pudding to-day," she went on, as the dessert came in, "so I sent out for this ice-cream. Take some of these lady-fingers with it."