“It was very pleasant before hoops—­in every way,” said Mrs. March.  “I was young, then; and I lived in Boston, where I suppose it was always simpler than in New York.  I used to sit on our steps.  It was delightful for girls—­the freedom.”

“I wish I had lived before hoops,” said Miss Triscoe.

“Well, there must be places where it’s before hoops yet:  Seattle, and Portland, Oregon, for all I know,” Mrs. March suggested.  “And there must be people in that epoch everywhere.”

“Like that young lady who twists and turns?” said Miss Triscoe, giving first one side of her face and then the other.  “They have a good time.  I suppose if Europe came to us in one way it had to come in another.  If it came in galleries and all that sort of thing, it had to come in chaperons.  You’ll think I’m a great extremist, Mrs. March; but sometimes I wish there was more America instead of less.  I don’t believe it’s as bad as people say.  Does Mr. March,” she asked, taking hold of the chair with one hand, to secure her footing from any caprice of the sea, while she gathered her skirt more firmly into the other, as she rose, “does he think that America is going—­all wrong?”

“All wrong?  How?”

“Oh, in politics, don’t you know.  And government, and all that.  And bribing.  And the lower classes having everything their own way.  And the horrid newspapers.  And everything getting so expensive; and no regard for family, or anything of that kind.”

Mrs. March thought she saw what Miss Triscoe meant, but she answered, still cautiously, “I don’t believe he does always.  Though there are times when he is very much disgusted.  Then he says that he is getting too old—­and we always quarrel about that—­to see things as they really are.  He says that if the world had been going the way that people over fifty have always thought it was going, it would have gone to smash in the time of the anthropoidal apes.”

“Oh, yes:  Darwin,” said Miss Triscoe, vaguely.  “Well, I’m glad he doesn’t give it up.  I didn’t know but I was holding out just because I had argued so much, and was doing it out of—­opposition.  Goodnight!” She called her salutation gayly over her shoulder, and Mrs. March watched her gliding out of the saloon with a graceful tilt to humor the slight roll of the ship, and a little lurch to correct it, once or twice, and wondered if Burnamy was afraid of her; it seemed to her that if she were a young man she should not be afraid of Miss Triscoe.

The next morning, just after she had arranged herself in her steamer chair, he approached her, bowing and smiling, with the first of his many bows and smiles for the day, and at the same time Miss Triscoe came toward her from the opposite direction.  She nodded brightly to him, and he gave her a bow and smile too; he always had so many of them to spare.

“Here is your chair!” Mrs. March called to her, drawing the shawl out of the chair next her own.  “Mr. March is wandering about the ship somewhere.”