A girl like her can afford to wait

Mrs. Heeny drew back to study the effect of her work. "You wait, Mrs. Spragg, you wait. If you go too fast you sometimes have to rip out the whole seam." "Oh, that's so--that's SO!" Mrs. Spragg exclaimed, with a tragic emphasis that made the masseuse glance up at her. "Of course it's so. And it's more so in New York than anywhere. The wrong set's like fly-paper: once you're in it you can pull and pull, but you'll never get out of it again." Undine's mother heaved another and more helpless sigh. "I wish YOU'D tell Undine that, Mrs. Heeny." "Oh, I guess Undine's all right. A girl like her can afford to wait. And if young Marvell's really taken with her she'll have the run of the place in no time." This solacing thought enabled Mrs. Spragg to yield herself unreservedly to Mrs. Heeny's ministrations, which were prolonged for a happy confidential hour; and she had just bidden the masseuse good-bye, and was restoring the rings to her fingers, when the door opened to admit her husband. Mr. Spragg came in silently, setting his high hat down on the centre-table, and laying his overcoat across one of the gilt chairs. He was tallish, grey-bearded and somewhat stooping, with the slack figure of the sedentary man who would be stout if he were not dyspeptic; and his cautious grey eyes with pouch-like underlids had straight black brows like his daughter's. His thin hair was worn a little too long over his coat collar, and a Masonic emblem dangled from the heavy gold chain which crossed his crumpled black waistcoat. He stood still in the middle of the room, casting a slow pioneering glance about its gilded void; then he said gently: "Well, mother?" Mrs. Spragg remained seated, but her eyes dwelt on him affectionately. "Undine's been asked out to a dinner-party; and Mrs. Heeny says it's to one of the first families. It's the sister of one of the gentlemen that Mabel Lipscomb introduced her to last night."