“This nice old house and garden of yours wouldn’t hold ’em after they got through with dolls, and some girls don’t even have any doll-days now.  It would be town and travel and change, and you haven’t got the price of that between you all, and to keep this going, too.  You’d have to go to N’York, for a couple of months at least, to a hotel, and what would that Evan of yours do trailing round to dances?  For you’re not built for it, though I did once think you’d be a go in society with that innocent-wise way, and your nose in the air, when you don’t like people, would pass for family pride.  I’d wager soon, in a few years, he’d stop picking boutonnieres in the garden every morning and sailing down to that 8:15 train as cool as if he owned time, if those boys were girls!  Though if Jenks-Smith gets the Bluff Colony he’s planned under way next spring, there’ll soon be some riding and golfing men hereabouts that’ll shake things up a bit,—­bridge whist, poker, and perhaps red and black to help out in the between-seasons.” (I little thought then what this colony and shaking would come to mean.)

“Money or not, it’s hard lines with daughters now—­work and poor pay for the mothers mostly.  You know that Mrs. Townley that used to visit me?  He was a banker and very rich; died four years ago, and left his wife with one son, who lived west, and five daughters, four that travelled in pairs and an odd one,—­all well fixed and living in a big house in one of those swell streets, east of the park, where never less than ten in help are kept.  Well, if you’ll believe it, she’s living alone with a pet dog and a companion, except in summer, when the Chicago son and his wife and babies make her a good visit down at North East, the only home comfort she has.

“All the girls married to foreigners?  Not a blessed one.  Two were bookish and called literary, but not enough to break out into anything; they didn’t agree with society (had impossible foreheads that ran nearly back to their necks, and thin hair); they went to college just to get the name of it and to kill time, but when they got through they didn’t rub along well at home; called taking an interest in the house beneath them and the pair that liked society frivolous; so they took a flat (I mean apartment—­a flat is when it’s less than a hundred a month and only has one bathroom), and set up for bachelor girls.  The younger pair did society for a while, and poor Mrs. Townley chaperoned round after them, as befitted her duty and position, and had gorgeous Worth gowns, all lace and jets, that I do believe shortened her breath, until one night in a slippery music-room she walked up the back of a polar bear rug, fell off his head, and had an awful coast on the floor, that racked her knee so that she could stay at home without causing remark, which she cheerfully did.  The two youngest girls were pretty, but they were snobs, and carried their money on their sleeves in such plain sight that they were too suspicious, and seemed to