This Side of Glory by Gwen Bristow

bunny-hug Neal said to her, “It’s such fun coming to Ardeith, Eleanor!” She gathered that they must have been used to dropping in this way, and remembered what Lysiane had said about Kester’s keeping the house always full of people. Violet had started playing The Mississippi Dippy-Dip and Eleanor danced with Neal until they were both out of breath, when they went over to sit by Neal’s wispy little wife, who appeared too frail to indulge in these insane dances. Eleanor thanked heaven for her own rugged health and felt grateful that she could give parties. When the supper bell rang they went into the dining-room. The table held an omelet, a cheese soufflé, a dish of ham and various plates of hot biscuits and preserves; and seeing how easy it all was when everybody was used to it, Eleanor had a gay evening and later told Kester to have a party whenever he felt like it. Rather surprised, Kester answered, “Why sugarplum, I do.”
    Now and then she gave a formal dinner, and sat in splendor among the silver and linen with her hair piled on top of her head and her bosom alight with antique jewelry Kester had brought up from the vault and given her to wear, but mostly the parties at Ardeith were hilarious affairs like this one, with everybody dancing while the phonograph played or Violet pounded out ragtime on the piano. Kester’s friends were a gay, insouciant group, with beautiful voices and exquisite manners. They had been friends since childhood, and much of their badinage she could not share, but she always felt that they were doing their best to make her feel at ease among them because they were all devoted to Kester. Most of them were obviously going to be like Denis and Lysiane, decorative ladies and gentlemen of no earthly use but very pleasant to have around, and Eleanor began to understand that the reverse of her father’s good qualities could be delightful. Of the lot she preferred Violet Purcell, whose cool terseness was refreshing.
    She enjoyed the life she was leading and found it easy to forget that she had ever been used to any other. When Fred wrote her a description of the President’s waterways conference in Washington she found his letter almost dull, and was astonished to remember how eager she would have been a year ago to be told about the advances in levee construction. But now Kester and Ardeith filled her thoughts so that anything else seemed a needless intrusion. Kester told her a dozen times a week that he had never been so happy. They had but one argument, when Eleanor insisted on being given a regular allowance for housekeeping. Characteristically, he said, “Buy what you need and send the bills to me,” and it took her two hours to convince him that she could not spend money with any degree of wisdom unless she knew how much she had to spend. Kester asked then, “All right, how much do you want?” Eleanor sighed; she wanted whatever it took to run the house, and was aghast when he told her Cameo and Mamie had always done the ordering and he had simply paid the bills without keeping any record of their monthly totals.
    At last she got out of him that Ardeith had produced about eight hundred bales of cotton last year, and that a good average price for cotton was ten cents a pound, which gave the plantation a gross income of forty thousand dollars. How much of this was clear she did not know, and it was impossible to make Kester be definite, so in despair she halved it, and though this did not seem a large income for a place like Ardeith she considered it adequate. The house was so lavishly equipped that it could be operated with no great expenditure. She asked Kester if he would give her six hundred dollars a month for housekeeping. Kester said “Certainly,” but as she was sure he would forget to do it she drove to the bank with him the next morning to see to it that he made the first deposit. She was exasperated. But he came out of the bank as debonair as usual and gave her a book