expression that had made Hilda's soul fall down and worship.  "And—I have found it!"  He drew in and expelled a vast breath.  "At last! My soul is at rest." 

 Lena tried to look serious in imitation of him, but that was not her way of expressing emotion. She made a brief struggle, then collapsed into her own mode—a vain, delighted, giggling laugh. 

 "Why do you smile?" he asked sternly. He revolted from this discord to his symphony. 

 She sobered with a frightened, deprecating look.  "Don't mind me," she pleaded.  "Pa says I'm a fool. I was laughing because I'm happy. You're such a sweet, romantic dream of a man." 

 Feuerstein was not particular either as to the quality or as to the source of his vanity-food. He accepted Lena's offering with a condescending nod and smile. They talked, or, rather, he talked and she listened and giggled until lunch time. As the room began to fill, they left and he walked home with her. 

 "You can come in," she said.  "Pa won't be home to lunch to-day and ma lets me do as I please." 

 The Gansers lived in East Eighty-first Street, in the regulation twenty-five-foot brownstone house. And within, also, it was of a familiar New York type. It was the home of the rich, vain ignoramus who has not taste enough to know that those to whom he has trusted for taste have shockingly betrayed him. Ganser had begun as a teamster for a brewery and had grown rapidly rich late in life. He happened to be elected president of a big Verein and so had got the notion that he was a person of importance and attainments beyond his fellows. Too coarse and narrow and ignorant to appreciate the elevated ideals of democracy, he reverted to the European vulgarities of rank and show. He decided that he owed it to himself and his family to live in the estate of "high folks."  He bought a house in what was for him an ultra-fashionable quarter, and called for bids to furnish it in the latest style. The results were even more regardless of taste than of expense—carpets that fought with curtains, pictures that quarreled with their frames and with the walls, upholstery so bellicose that it seemed perilous to sit upon. 

 But Feuerstein was as impressed as the Gansers had been the first time they beheld the gorgeousness of their palace. He looked about with a proprietary sense—"I'll marry this little idiot," he said to himself. "Maybe my nest won't be downy, and maybe I won't lie at my ease in it!" 

 Prev. P 26/78 next