Chapter 4 - Page 2

looked at
her humorously. "You invited the whole dinner-party, I suppose?"

"No--no one."

"Going all alone in a box?" She was disdainfully silent. "I don't s'pose
you're thinking of taking mother and me?"

This was so obviously comic that they all laughed--even Mrs. Spragg--and
Undine went on more mildly: "I want to do something for Mabel Lipscomb:
make some return. She's always taking me 'round, and I've never done a
thing for her--not a single thing."

This appeal to the national belief in the duty of reciprocal "treating"
could not fail of its effect, and Mrs. Spragg murmured: "She never HAS,
Abner,"--but Mr. Spragg's brow remained unrelenting.

"Do you know what a box costs?"

"No; but I s'pose you do," Undine returned with unconscious flippancy.

"I do. That's the trouble. WHY won't seats do you?"

"Mabel could buy seats for herself."

"That's so," interpolated Mrs. Spragg--always the first to succumb to
her daughter's arguments.

"Well, I guess I can't buy a box for her."

Undine's face gloomed more deeply. She sat silent, her chocolate
thickening in the cup, while one hand, almost as much beringed as her
mother's, drummed on the crumpled table-cloth.

"We might as well go straight back to Apex," she breathed at last
between her teeth.

Mrs. Spragg cast a frightened glance at her husband. These struggles
between two resolute wills always brought on her palpitations, and she
wished she had her phial of digitalis with her.

"A parterre box costs a hundred and twenty-five dollars a night," said
Mr. Spragg, transferring a toothpick to his waistcoat pocket.

"I only want it once."

He looked at her with a quizzical puckering of his crows'-feet. "You
only want most things once. Undine."

It was an observation they had made in her earliest youth--Undine never
wanted anything long, but she wanted it "right off." And until she got
it the house was uninhabitable.

"I'd a good deal rather have a box for the season," she rejoined, and he
saw the opening he had given her. She had two ways of getting things
out of him against his principles; the tender wheedling way, and the
harsh-lipped and cold--and he did not know which he dreaded most. As a
child they had admired her assertiveness, had made Apex ring with their
boasts of it; but it had long since cowed Mrs. Spragg, and it was
beginning to frighten her husband.

"Fact is, Undie," he said, weakening, "I'm a little mite strapped just
this month."

Her eyes