This was so obviously comic that they all laughed—­even Mrs. Spragg—­and Undine went on more mildly:  “I want to do something for Mabel Lipscomb:  make some return.  She’s always taking me ’round, and I’ve never done a thing for her—­not a single thing.”

This appeal to the national belief in the duty of reciprocal “treating” could not fail of its effect, and Mrs. Spragg murmured:  “She never has, Abner,”—­but Mr. Spragg’s brow remained unrelenting.

“Do you know what a box costs?”

“No; but I s’pose you do,” Undine returned with unconscious flippancy.

“I do.  That’s the trouble.  Why won’t seats do you?”

“Mabel could buy seats for herself.”

“That’s so,” interpolated Mrs. Spragg—­always the first to succumb to her daughter’s arguments.

“Well, I guess I can’t buy a box for her.”

Undine’s face gloomed more deeply.  She sat silent, her chocolate thickening in the cup, while one hand, almost as much beringed as her mother’s, drummed on the crumpled table-cloth.

“We might as well go straight back to Apex,” she breathed at last between her teeth.

Mrs. Spragg cast a frightened glance at her husband.  These struggles between two resolute wills always brought on her palpitations, and she wished she had her phial of digitalis with her.

“A parterre box costs a hundred and twenty-five dollars a night,” said Mr. Spragg, transferring a toothpick to his waistcoat pocket.

“I only want it once.”

He looked at her with a quizzical puckering of his crows’-feet.  “You only want most things once.  Undine.”

It was an observation they had made in her earliest youth—­Undine never wanted anything long, but she wanted it “right off.”  And until she got it the house was uninhabitable.

“I’d a good deal rather have a box for the season,” she rejoined, and he saw the opening he had given her.  She had two ways of getting things out of him against his principles; the tender wheedling way, and the harsh-lipped and cold—­and he did not know which he dreaded most.  As a child they had admired her assertiveness, had made Apex ring with their boasts of it; but it had long since cowed Mrs. Spragg, and it was beginning to frighten her husband.

“Fact is, Undie,” he said, weakening, “I’m a little mite strapped just this month.”

Her eyes grew absent-minded, as they always did when he alluded to business.  That was man’s province; and what did men go “down town” for but to bring back the spoils to their women?  She rose abruptly, leaving her parents seated, and said, more to herself than the others:  “Think I’ll go for a ride.”

“Oh, Undine!” fluttered Mrs. Spragg.  She always had palpitations when Undine rode, and since the Aaronson episode her fears were not confined to what the horse might do.

“Why don’t you take your mother out shopping a little?” Mr. Spragg suggested, conscious of the limitation of his resources.