The Turmoil | Page 9

she'd respect him more and learn to behave herself!"
"'Behave'?"
"Oh, well, I mean she's so insincere," said Edith, characteristically evasive when it came to stating the very point to which she had led, and in this not unique of her sex.
Bibbs contented himself with a non-committal gesture. "Business is crawling up the old streets," he said, his long, tremulous hand indicating a vasty structure in course of erection. "The boarding- houses come first and then the--"
"That isn't for shops," she informed him. "That's a new investment of papa's --the 'Sheridan Apartments.'"
"Well, well," he murmured. "I supposed 'Sheridan' was almost well enough known here already."
"Oh, we're well enough known ABOUT!" she said, impatiently. "I guess there isn't a man, woman, child, or nigger baby in town that doesn't know who we are. But we aren't in with the right people."
"No!" he exclaimed. "Who's all that?"
"Who's all what?"
"The 'right people.'"
"You know what I mean: the best people, the old families--the people that have the real social position in this town and that know they've got it."
Bibbs indulged in his silent chuckle again; he seemed greatly amused. "I thought that the people who actually had the real what-you-may- call-it didn't know it," he said. "I've always understood that it was very unsatisfactory, because if you thought about it you didn't have it, and if you had it you didn't know it."
"That's just bosh," she retorted. "They know it in this town, all right! I found out a lot of things, long before we began to think of building out in this direction. The right people in this town aren't always the society-column ones, and they mix around with outsiders, and they don't all belong to any one club--they're taken in all sorts into all their clubs--but they're a clan, just the same; and they have the clan feeling and they're just as much We, Us and Company as any crowd you read about anywhere in the world. Most of 'em were here long before papa came, and the grandfathers of the girls of my age knew each other, and--"
"I see," Bibbs interrupted, gravely. "Their ancestors fled together from many a stricken field, and Crusaders' blood flows in their veins. I always understood the first house was built by an old party of the name of Vertrees who couldn't get along with Dan'l Boone, and hurried away to these parts because Dan'l wanted him to give back a gun he'd lent him."
Edith gave a little ejaculation of alarm. "You mustn't repeat that story, Bibbs, even if it's true. The Vertreeses are THE best family, and of course the very oldest here; they were an old family even before Mary Vertrees's great-great-grandfather came west and founded this settlement. He came from Lynn, Massachusetts, and they have relatives there YET--some of the best people in Lynn!"
"No!" exclaimed Bibbs, incredulously.
"And there are other old families like the Vertreeses," she went on, not heeding him; "the Lamhorns and the Kittersbys and the J. Palmerston Smiths--"
"Strange names to me," he interrupted. "Poor things! None of them have my acquaintance."
"No, that's just it!" she cried. "And papa had never even heard the name of Vertrees! Mrs. Vertrees went with some anti-smoke committee to see him, and he told her that smoke was what made her husband bring home his wages from the pay-roll on Saturday night! HE told us about it, and I thought I just couldn't live through the night, I was so ashamed! Mr. Vertrees has always lived on his income, and papa didn't know him, of course. They're the stiffist, most elegant people in the whole town. And to crown it all, papa went and bought the next lot to the old Vertrees country mansion--it's in the very heart of the best new residence district now, and that's where the New House is, right next door to them--and I must say it makes their place look rather shabby! I met Mary Vertrees when I joined the Mission Service Helpers, but she never did any more than just barely bow to me, and since papa's break I doubt if she'll do that! They haven't called."
"And you think if I spread this gossip about Vertrees the First stealing Dan'l Boone's gun, the chances that they WILL call--"
"Papa knows what a break he made with Mrs. Vertrees. I made him understand that," said Edith, demurely, "and he's promised to try and meet Mr. Vertrees and be nice to him. It's just this way: if we don't know THEM, it's practically no use in our having build the New House; and if we DO know them and they're decent to us, we're right with the right people. They can do the whole thing for us. Bobby Lamhorn told Sibyl he was going to bring his mother to call on her and on