Jewel Weed

Lena sat one morning behind the coffee-urn so self-absorbed and smiling

that Dick wondered.

"Mrs. Percival," he remonstrated, "you have a husband at this end of the

table. Have you forgotten it? What are you thinking about?"

"Dick, I believe I have found a friend--a real friend," Lena jerked out.

"A good many of them, I should say. Who is this fortunate person?"

"Mrs. Appleton."

"Mrs. Appleton!" Dick gulped at his coffee and stared at his wife in

some perplexity. "Isn't she a--well, for one thing, a good deal older

than you?"

"She'll be all the better guide," Lena retorted with one of her demure

pouts. "You know she invited me to join the class she has gotten up for

Swami Ram Juna. You needn't grin in that horrid way, Dick. I shall be

so wise very soon that you'll be afraid of me."

"Heaven forbid, you dear little inspirer of awe."

"At any rate, she's taken the greatest fancy to me, and I to her. She

came here yesterday in the pouring rain, and we spent a long afternoon

talking together. We feel the same way about everything. She says that

with my beauty, I ought to make a great hit, and she's going to give a

big reception in my honor. Of course, with her experience, she can be a

great help to me."

"I see." Dick forgot his breakfast entirely, and meditated.

"What is Mr. Appleton like?" Lena persisted.

"He has enough money to make me pale my ineffectual fires, and he adds

to that the personality of the great American desert. But I suspect his

wife is so wholly satisfied with the golden glow that the latter fact

has never penetrated to her consciousness. I think Mrs. Appleton has not

yet recovered from her astonishment at finding herself wedded to

profusion. It appears to delight her afresh from day to day."

"You can be very nasty about people when you choose." Lena's tone was

unmistakably vexed.

"Frankly, Lena, I do not like Mrs. Appleton or her attitude toward life.

She is the kind of woman who refuses to take the simplest thing simply,

the kind that thinks subscription dances and clubs and private cars and

family tombs were invented chiefly to show our exclusiveness."

"Well, what are they for?"

Dick laughed. "Most of them to get all the fun there is in things, I

should say; and the tombs, to show that love holds even after death."

"I like her, anyway," said Lena. "I like her better than the stuck-up

kind of women." The words sound bald. Lena's lips made them seem

humorous. It was so easy to avoid disapprobation just by that little

smile and whimsical twist of the mouth.

"And whom do you mean by that!"