The Custom of the Country | Page 4

parents dreaded so much
as her being nervous. Mrs. Spragg's maternal apprehensions
unconsciously escaped in her next words.
"I do hope she'll quiet down now," she murmured, feeling quieter

herself as her hand sank into Mrs. Heeny's roomy palm.
"Who's that? Undine?"
"Yes. She seemed so set on that Mr. Popple's coming round. From the
way he acted last night she thought he'd be sure to come round this
morning. She's so lonesome, poor child--I can't say as I blame her."
"Oh, he'll come round. Things don't happen as quick as that in New
York," said Mrs. Heeny, driving her nail-polisher cheeringly.
Mrs. Spragg sighed again. "They don't appear to. They say New
Yorkers are always in a hurry; but I can't say as they've hurried much to
make our acquaintance."
Mrs. Heeny drew back to study the effect of her work. "You wait, Mrs.
Spragg, you wait. If you go too fast you sometimes have to rip out the
whole seam."
"Oh, that's so--that's SO!" Mrs. Spragg exclaimed, with a tragic
emphasis that made the masseuse glance up at her.
"Of course it's so. And it's more so in New York than anywhere. The
wrong set's like fly-paper: once you're in it you can pull and pull, but
you'll never get out of it again."
Undine's mother heaved another and more helpless sigh. "I wish
YOU'D tell Undine that, Mrs. Heeny."
"Oh, I guess Undine's all right. A girl like her can afford to wait. And if
young Marvell's really taken with her she'll have the run of the place in
no time."
This solacing thought enabled Mrs. Spragg to yield herself
unreservedly to Mrs. Heeny's ministrations, which were prolonged for a
happy confidential hour; and she had just bidden the masseuse
good-bye, and was restoring the rings to her fingers, when the door
opened to admit her husband.
Mr. Spragg came in silently, setting his high hat down on the
centre-table, and laying his overcoat across one of the gilt chairs. He
was tallish, grey-bearded and somewhat stooping, with the slack figure
of the sedentary man who would be stout if he were not dyspeptic; and
his cautious grey eyes with pouch-like underlids had straight black
brows like his daughter's. His thin hair was worn a little too long over
his coat collar, and a Masonic emblem dangled from the heavy gold
chain which crossed his crumpled black waistcoat.
He stood still in the middle of the room, casting a slow pioneering

glance about its gilded void; then he said gently: "Well, mother?"
Mrs. Spragg remained seated, but her eyes dwelt on him affectionately.
"Undine's been asked out to a dinner-party; and Mrs. Heeny says it's to
one of the first families. It's the sister of one of the gentlemen that
Mabel Lipscomb introduced her to last night."
There was a mild triumph in her tone, for it was owing to her insistence
and Undine's that Mr. Spragg had been induced to give up the house
they had bought in West End Avenue, and move with his family to the
Stentorian. Undine had early decided that they could not hope to get on
while they "kept house"--all the fashionable people she knew either
boarded or lived in hotels. Mrs. Spragg was easily induced to take the
same view, but Mr. Spragg had resisted, being at the moment unable
either to sell his house or to let it as advantageously as he had hoped.
After the move was made it seemed for a time as though he had been
right, and the first social steps would be as difficult to make in a hotel
as in one's own house; and Mrs. Spragg was therefore eager to have
him know that Undine really owed her first invitation to a meeting
under the roof of the Stentorian.
"You see we were right to come here, Abner," she added, and he
absently rejoined: "I guess you two always manage to be right."
But his face remained unsmiling, and instead of seating himself and
lighting his cigar, as he usually did before dinner, he took two or three
aimless turns about the room, and then paused in front of his wife.
"What's the matter--anything wrong down town?" she asked, her eyes
reflecting his anxiety.
Mrs. Spragg's knowledge of what went on "down town" was of the
most elementary kind, but her husband's face was the barometer in
which she had long been accustomed to read the leave to go on
unrestrictedly, or the warning to pause and abstain till the coming storm
should be weathered.
He shook his head. "N--no. Nothing worse than what I can see to, if
you and Undine will go steady for a while." He paused and looked
across the room at his daughter's door. "Where is she--out?"
"I guess she's