Miss Anne threw up her hands. "Happy? In a way, perhaps. But she brought out the worst in Louis. She played life as a game, and he played with her. And he couldn't afford to play, and so he lost his law practice—lost everything— And toward the end they had a quarrel, and she left him. I think he was glad— She died in Italy."
So that was it! As Delia had said, he was "always losin' 'em." Would the day come when he would also lose his daughter?
Miss Anne, having paid her bill at the desk, came back.
"What will my father do, now that he has lost everything?" Hildegarde asked.
"If the election goes our way, he'll ask for a diplomatic position, and we could live more cheaply abroad. You'd like it there, Hildegarde."
As they got into Miss Anne's little car, Hildegarde, wondered what else would happen. A few weeks ago there had been only the farm and its dull routine, and now there stretched ahead a vista of endless excitement.
Buying more clothes was the immediate excitement—five new frocks—three hats—two coats.
Hildegarde protested. "Do you think we ought to afford them?"
"We haven't been extravagant," Miss Anne informed her. "Louis is not so poor that he can't dress you suitably."
Hildegarde reflected that he was surely as poor as her aunts on the farm, who did not spend on clothes in a decade as much as he had already spent on her new wardrobe. Yet they owned the house in which they
