down?" With a magnificent gesture she tore Marvell's ring from her
finger. "I'll send this back this minute. I'll tell him I thought he
was a rich man, and now I see I'm mistaken--" She burst into shattering
sobs, rocking her beautiful body back and forward in all the abandonment
of young grief; and her father stood over her, stroking her shoulder and
saying helplessly: "I'll see what I can do, Undine--"

All his life, and at ever-diminishing intervals, Mr. Spragg had been
called on by his womenkind to "see what he could do"; and the seeing had
almost always resulted as they wished. Undine did not have to send back
her ring, and in her state of trance-like happiness she hardly asked by
what means her path had been smoothed, but merely accepted her mother's
assurance that "father had fixed everything all right."

Mr. Spragg accepted the situation also. A son-in-law who expected to
be pensioned like a Grand Army veteran was a phenomenon new to his
experience; but if that was what Undine wanted she should have it. Only
two days later, however, he was met by a new demand--the young people
had decided to be married "right off," instead of waiting till June.
This change of plan was made known to Mr. Spragg at a moment when he was
peculiarly unprepared for the financial readjustment it necessitated. He
had always declared himself able to cope with any crisis if Undine and
her mother would "go steady"; but he now warned them of his inability to
keep up with the new pace they had set. Undine, not deigning to return
to the charge, had commissioned her mother to speak for her; and Mr.
Spragg was surprised to meet in his wife a firmness as inflexible as his
daughter's.

"I can't do it, Loot--can't put my hand on the cash," he had protested;
but Mrs. Spragg fought him inch by inch, her back to the wall--flinging