“‘Archie!’ remonstrated Cordelia, but he good-naturedly ignored her and continued:  ’Now I want Janet to have a jolly winter and marry a good fellow when the time comes, but as we’ve got the nicest sort of friends, educated and all that, who have travelled along with us, as you have, from the beginning, why should we change our habits and feathers and try to fly for a different roost?’

“‘Archibald,’ said Cordelia, in such a tone that she was not to be gainsaid, ’Lavinia, as a woman of the world, will understand what you refuse to:  that it is very important that our daughter should have the surroundings that are now customary to the social set with whom she has been educated, and into which, if she is to be happy, she must marry.  If she is to meet the right people, she must be rightly presented.  All her set wear low gowns at dinner, whether guests are present or not, just as much as men wear their evening dress at night and their business suits in the morning.  That we have kept up our old-fogy habits so long has nothing to do with the present question.’

“’Except that I have to strain my purse to bring up everything else to suit the clothes, as naturally gaslight, a leg of mutton, and two vegetables do not make a good foreground to bare shoulders and a white vest!  And I’d rather fund the cash as a nest-egg for Jenny.’

“‘Archie, you are too absurd!’ snapped Cordelia, yet more than half inclined to laugh; for she used to be the jolliest woman in the world before the spray of the Whirlpool got into her eyes.

“‘As to meeting suitable people to marry, and all that rubbish,’ pursued Archie, relentlessly, ’I was considered fairly eligible in my time, and did you meet me at any of the dances you went to, or at the Assemblies at Fourteenth Street Delmonico’s that were the swell thing in those days?  No; I pulled you out of an old Broadway stage that had lost a wheel and keeled over into a pile of snow opposite father’s office, when you were practically standing on your head.  You didn’t fuss, and I got to know you better in five minutes than any one could in five years of this rotten fuss and feathers.’

“’That was purely accidental, and I wish you wouldn’t mention it so often,’ said Cordelia, flushing; and so the conversation, at first playful, gradually working toward a painful dispute, went on, until my faithful Lucy came to escort me home, without our having our game of whist, that excuse for intelligent and silent companionship.”

* * * * *

“January 25th.

“I dwelt on that little dinner episode, my dear Barbara, because in it you will find an answer to several questions I read between your lines.  Since my return I find that practically all my old friends have flown to what Archie Martin called ‘a different roost,’ or else failing, or having no desire so to do, have left the city altogether, leaving me very lonely.  Not only those with daughters to bring out, but many of my spinster contemporaries are listed with the buds at balls and dinner dances, and their gowns and jewels described.  Ah, what a fatal memory for ages one has in regard to schoolmates!  Josephine Ponsonby was but one class behind us, and she is dancing away yet.