The Turmoil | Page 9

her. "You see, she couldn't have
married me, because I didn't know her; and besides, if she's as
mercenary as all that she'd have been too clever. The head doctor even
had to lend me the money for my ticket home."
"I didn't mean anything unpleasant about YOU," Edith babbled. "I only
meant I thought she was the kind of girl who was so simply crazy to
marry somebody she'd have married anybody that asked her."
"Yes, yes," said Bibbs, "it's all straight." And, perceiving that his
sister's expression was that of a person whose adroitness has set matters
prefectly to rights, he chuckled silently.
"Roscoe's perfectly lovely to her," she continued, a moment later. "Too
lovely! If he'd wake up a little and lay down the law, some day, like a
MAN, I guess 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!