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 her hot chocolate. Anything was better than allowing even so sympathetic a person as Mrs. Larry to see that she was shedding tears over a certain party now speeding in the direction of Kansas City. Mrs. Larry drew her smooth brows together in a frown.

"But, Claire, dear, there are women who keep nice little homes on twenty dollars a week."

"Their husbands are not ambitious and coming lawyers. No, dear woman, I recognize my own limitations, and I love Jimmy too well to interfere with his future—to—to wreck his dear life. But it does seem as if mother might have realized that one of us girls might fall in love with some one besides a rich man. She might have taught me something about the value of money and the management of a house."

Mrs. Larry, reaching for her purse, pictured the easy-going, money-spending life of the Pierce household, with its inherited and well invested money and its irresponsible wife and mother. But she said in her cheeriest voice:

"Well, my dear Claire, there is always a way out of such a situation, when there's nothing more serious at stake than the high cost of liv-