would fit in fine at the factory. Your father needs some one like that to help him out, until Jimmy is big enough to take hold. . . . Don't trust Ellen too far. . . . She's too quiet to be trusted."
At which May only laughed. "Why, Ellen wouldn't think of marrying him," she said, "she won't marry anybody in this town. . . . It isn't likely she'll ever marry . . . at least for a long time. Besides, she doesn't think he's good enough."
Mrs. Seton snorted angrily and put down the Ladies' Home Journal. "Good enough for her. . . ! Who is she to be so choosey? . . . Why, the Tollivers can't pay their bills. . . . They're just out of bankruptcy. . . . Good enough for her. . . ! If she ever gets as fine and upstanding a young man as Mr. Murdock . . . a man so industrious and hardworking and well-behaved, she can thank her stars. . . ." For a moment Mrs. Seton paused to recover her breath, greatly dissipated by this indignant outburst. That Ellen should scorn Mr. Clarence Murdock was not a thing to be borne lightly. Then she continued, "And this talk about going to New York. . . . How's she going to get to New York? Who's to put up the money, I'd like to know? Old Julia Shane, I suppose. . . . It's not likely the old woman would part with a cent even if she could."
It was, in the Seton family, a cherished fiction that Julia Shane was stricken by an overwhelming poverty: it was a fiction that increased the confidence of a fortune founded upon reinforced corsets.
"Julia Shane!" continued the ambitious mother, "Julia Shane! What's she got to be proud about? . . . With a daughter as fast and loose as Lily? . . . I suppose she's proud of living in that filthy old house in the midst of the Flats."
And so the ashes of the feud between the Setons and the Barr-Shane-Tolliver clan, lighted accidentally by the chance appearance of the guiltless and model Mr. Murdock, showed signs of flaming up again after a peace of twenty years.
