as eleven o'clock and
she waked Chunk up out of a chair in the hall and made him take her
home; and he said the Swami was a _very clever_ man and she said
American men had no culture and didn't understand women, and Chunk
didn't even say good night to her, and she went to sleep crying, and
remembering she hadn't after all learned from the girls how to get
along without that ribbon in her costume and she must get up early and
buy it, which made her utter one final little plaintive sniffle of
vexation.

It was a nice child's life, full of small things which looked big,
uncorrected in its view of love, culture, charity, or anything else by
any carrying of the burdens, enduring of the shocks, or thrilling to
the triumphs, of a really adult life. Her brother, when he went to
work, was her junior. In five years he was much her senior. (You may
verify this by observation among your own acquaintances.) Marie was
not a minute older now than when she left school. Talking to her at
twenty-six was exactly the same experience as talking to her at
twenty-one. That was what the world, from John Wyatt to her father,
had done for her.

[Illustration: SEE THE PROUD HUSBAND. HE DID IT ALL HIMSELF.]

From such a life there are necessarily revulsions. The empty leisure
of the Nice Girl is quite successfully total waste. But it becomes
intolerable to that waster who, though not desiring genuine
occupation, desires genuine sensation.

Hence smart sets.

Every social group in which there is much leisure has its own smart
set. There may be a million dollars a year to spend. There may be only
a few thousands. But there is always a smart set.

How suddenly its smartness may follow its leisure, how accurately its
plunge into luxury may duplicate the suddenness of modern luxury
itself, you may observe with your own eyes almost anywhere.

You see a little crowd of women come into the Mandarin Tea Room of the
St. DuBarry in Novellapolis in the fresh West. When they remove their
automobile veils you see that they were once, and very recently, the
nicest sort of members of the sewing circle and the W. C. T. U. of
Lone Tree Crossing.

When the waiter comes along with their cocktails and they begin to sip
them out of their tea cups, you wake up with a jerk to realize that
it's half past three in the afternoon and the evening has begun.

How rapid it all is!

There's Margaret Simpson. A few years ago you might have seen her
pumping the water