well-paying one, and yet you're thoroughbreds
underneath." (Poor vulgar soul, she didn't in the least realize how I
might take her stricture any more than she saw my desire to laugh.)

"Of course here and there a girl in society does turn out well and rides
an elephant or a coronet,--of course I mean wears a coronet,--though ten
to one it jams the hairpins into her head, but mostly daughters are
regular hornets,--that is, if you're ambitious and mean to keep in
society. Of course you're not in it, and, being comfortably poor, so to
speak, might be content to see your girls marry their best chance, even
if it wasn't worth much a year, and settle down to babies and minding
their own business; but then they mightn't agree to that, and where would
you and Evan be?

"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
m