the phony
pearls of Hoboken Fanny, and Hatpin Molly leads the spiel with Clarence
the Pig."

"Phil, you are too disgusting!"

"I'm sorry--it isn't very nice of me, I suppose. But, dear, I'm dead
tired of moral squalor. I do like the brightness of things, too, but I
don't care for the phosphorescence of social decay."

"What in the world is the matter?" she exclaimed in dismay. "You are
talking like the wildest socialist."

He laughed. "We have become a nation of what you call
'socialists'--though there are other names for us which mean more. I am
not discontented, if that is what you mean; I am only impatient; and
there is a difference. . . . And you have just asked me whether a young
girl is interesting to me. I answer, yes, thank God!--for the cleaner,
saner, happier hours I have spent this winter among my own kind have
been spent where the younger set dominated.

"They are good for us, Nina; they are the hope of our own
kind--well-taught, well-drilled, wholesome even when negative in mind;
and they come into our world so diffident yet so charmingly eager, so
finished yet so unspoiled, that--how can they fail to touch a man and
key him to his best? How can they fail to arouse in us the best of
sympathy, of chivalry, of anxious solicitude lest they become some day
as we are and stare at life out of the faded eyes of knowledge!"

He laid his hands in hers, smiling a little at his own earnestness.

"Alarmist? No! The younger set are better than those who bred them; and
if, in time, they, too, fall short, they will not fall as far as their
parents. And, in their turn, when they look around them at the younger
set whom they have taught in the light and wisdom of their own
shortcomings, they will see fresher, sweeter, lovelier young people than
we see now. And it will continue so, dear, through the jolly
generations. Life is all right, only, like art, it is very, very long
sometimes."

"Good out of evil, Phil?" asked his sister, smiling; "innocence from the
hotbeds of profligacy? purity out of vulgarity? sanity from hideous
ostentation? Is that what you come preaching?"

"Yes; and isn't it curious! Look at that old harridan, Mrs. Sanxon
Orchil! There are no more innocent and charming girls in Manhattan than
her daughters. She _knew_ enough to make them different; so does the
majority of that sort. Look at the Cardwell girl and the Innis girl and
the Craig girl! Look at Mrs. Delmour-Carnes's children! And, Nina--e