Although Molly’s handsome Terence had not, according to her expectation of him, quite set the world of his craft on fire, he had made a respectable livelihood; and she and their children adored him for his sweet, cheery temper and easy-going ways. Late in her life he had imported to live with them a lively little old Irish mother--styled by the juniors “Granny”--who proved to be just the dash of flavor needful to complete their family salad. Petulant, affectionate, witty, and light-hearted, Granny had bravely helped her daughter-in-law to bear the increasing burden of domestic life on a limited income in a community where upon working people there is a call for every dollar before it is well in hand.
As the children had grown up, and their varied mental gifts cried aloud for the best education of the times, Molly had, indeed, had much ado to make both ends meet. Luckily for her, the strain of keeping up appearances was not among her trials.
When the Blairs had married, possessing between them means enough to give and take the hospitality of that simpler period, they were a part of the circle that in those days codified the social laws of the metropolis. Mistress Molly, a whilom belle of her set, did not lack for attentions, and Terence was popular. But very soon, it became apparent to the young couple that they were straining overmuch to keep abreast with people who affected to put aside the hum-drum ways of their Revolutionary, or Dutch, or Puritan ancestors; that the growing elaboration of life among their kind must drive the Blairs either to accept without returning, or not to accept at all. So Molly let go the threads of gossamer that bound her to her world, and little by little the Blairs had drifted into insignificance. To Terence, with his insular density as to the shades of difference in American society, it had not seemed a mighty matter to give up Molly’s friends; but she was a woman, and at first it had cost her a few natural pangs. Now for nearly twenty years she and Terence had lived their own life, and on the whole had done very well without the things forsaken.
How was it, then, that to-night, as the little house-mother sat at her homely task, her thoughts, roving over the field of her interests, general and special, had settled with a tinge of wistfulness upon a very trivial matter? In an evening newspaper she had chanced to read the account of a ball, given the night before for the young daughter of one of her friends of early years, when the _débutante_ had literally walked upon flowers.