Under Fire | Page 3

me, has she?"
"No," said the elder lady. "They are old residents, though, and years
ago when the city was new your father and hers--indeed, her husband
and mine--were well acquainted, but we drifted apart as the city grew.
She was Almira Prendergast."
"I'm sure I never heard of her when I was a girl, though, of course, I
was away at school a good deal. Every one knows her by sight now
because she's the most conspicuous woman in church. She dresses
magnificently," said Mrs. Cranston the younger. "I couldn't help
noticing her diamonds last Sunday."

"They must have been big, Meg," put in the captain, reflectively, as he
was getting himself out of his smoking-jacket. "Let's see,--ours is a
hundred-dollar pew down near the foot of the side aisle, and hers a
thousand-dollar box-stall just in front of the centre. Could they flash all
that distance? They'd be useful for signalling----"
"Wilbur! I do wish you wouldn't mingle church and cavalry slang. It's
downright irreverent, and at the bottom of your heart you're anything
but an irreverent man."
"I won't," said the captain, solemnly; "at least I'll try to separate the
ideas--they are a trifle incongruous--if you'll tell me how at that
distance you could mingle your devotions with appraisal of Mrs.
Barnard's diamonds."
"I didn't. If you'd gone to church yourself you'd understand these things.
I couldn't help it. I simply happened to be next to her afterwards--at
communion."
"Oh, I see," said Cranston, giving a jab at his thinning hair with the
thickest and stiffest of brushes. "That does bring us to close quarters,
doesn't it?" Then with provoking deliberation he rearranged his necktie
and began pulling on his coat. "Hum, let's see," he went on, his eyes
twinkling and his lips twitching ominously, "anything wrong about Mrs.
B., mother mine, or with the millionaire husband? No? I see: just some
of those people one meets at the Lord's table and nobody else's."
"Wilbur!" exclaimed Mrs. Cranston, in tones of horror. "Indeed, indeed,
mamma, he isn't a bit like that out on the frontier. It's only when he gets
into civilized church circles that he says these outrageous things. If you
could hear him read the burial service over some of our poor fellows as
I have heard him, you'd know he lacked no reverence at all. He's
queer,--he always has been about these social distinctions. You know
and I know they are inevitable."
But leaving wife and mother to deplore his conduct and comfort each
other with the assurance that he really knew better and wasn't as bad as
he painted himself, which was occasionally in lurid colors, as must be

admitted, Captain Cranston went down-stairs with a certain stiffness of
gait which his intimates were well aware was attributable entirely to a
war reminiscence of Pickett's parapet at Five Forks, but which nine out
of ten, uninitiated, ascribed to military hauteur. He was still smiling his
whimsical, teasing smile, for, though a devoted son, husband, and
father, Wilbur Cranston was at times a trial to his feminine connections,
and entertained on matters of church and state some views that were
incompatible with those of high society. With opportunities second to
none other when he joined the pioneer circle in the early days, Mr.
Cranston, senior, had but moderately prospered from a worldly point of
view. Eminent in his profession, he was destitute of any instinct of
accumulation. He was a man the whole county honored,--whose word
was his bond, whose purse-strings had never known a knot,--who had
made large moneys in the law and spent them in charity, until now,
occupying a social position at the top of the ladder, he lived but
modestly in the house that was once the envy of all his neighbors, many
of whom once, and more than once, the beneficiaries of his charity,
now looked down upon him from the colossal heights of their wheat
elevators or sixteen-story office blocks. "The Cranstons were among
our oldest and best people," said Society; "it is too bad they are so
poor." For there had been a time when the old lawyer's health failed
and practice was forbidden, and when Wilbur, once the recipient of a
liberal allowance, felt called upon not only to resign that, but often to
help from a captain's pay. Better times had come, and the soldier son
had been able to make investments for himself and for his father in far
Western mining property that yielded good return; but even when
known as one of the few well-to-do men in his regiment, Cranston had
persisted in a certain simplicity of living that some people could not
understand. There were officers who had married wealthy
women,--women whose gowns were superb, whose parlors and tables
were richly furnished, whose household