upon the same subject. It was pretty evident how much Kings Port was

buzzing over all this! They fondly believed they did not like it; but
what would they have done without it? What, indeed, were they going to do

when it was all over and done with, one way or another? As a matter of
fact, they ought to be grateful to Hortense for contributing

illustriously to the excitement of their lives.
"Of course, I am well aware," Mrs. Gregory pursued, "that the young

people of to-day believe they can all 'teach their grandmothers to suck
eggs,' as we say in Kings Port."

"We say it elsewhere, too," I mildly put in.
"Indeed? I didn't know that the North, with its pest of Hebrew and other

low immigrants, had retained any of the good old homely saws which we
brought from England. But do you imagine that if the control of marriage

rested in the hands of parents and grandparents (where it properly
belongs), you would be witnessing in the North this disgusting spectacle

of divorce?"
"But, Mrs. St. Michael--"

"We didn't invite you to argue when we invited you to walk!" cried the
lady, laughing.

"We should like you to answer the question," said Mrs. Weguelin St.
Michael.

"And tell us," Mrs. Gregory continued, "if it's your opinion that a boy
who has never been married is a better judge of matrimony's pitfalls than

his father."
"Or than any older person who has bravely and worthily gone through with

the experience," Mrs. Weguelin added.
"Ladies, I've no mind to argue. But we're ahead of Europe; we don't need

their clumsy old plan."
Mrs. Gregory gave a gallant, incredulous snort. "I shall be interested to

learn of anything that is done better here than in Europe."
"Oh, many things, surely! But especially the mating of the fashionable

young. They don't need any parents to arrange for them; it's much better
managed through precocity."

"Through precocity? I scarcely follow you."
And Mrs. Weguelin softly added, "You must excuse us if we do not follow

you." But her softnessnevertheless indicated that if there were any one
present needing leniency, it was myself.

"Why, yes," I told them, "it's through precocity. The new-rich American
no longer commits the blunder of keeping his children innocent. You'll

see it beginning in the dancing-class, where I heard an exquisite little
girl of six say to a little boy, 'Go away; I can't dance with you,

because my mamma says your mamma only keeps a maid to answer the
doorbell.' When they get home from the dancing-class, tutors in poker and

bridge are waiting to teach them how to gamble for each other's little
dimes. I saw a little boy in knickerbockers and a wide collar throw down

the evening paper--"
"At that age? They read the papers?" interrupted Mrs. Gregory.

"They read nothing else at any age. He threw it down and said, 'Well, I
guess there's not much behind this raid on Steel Preferred.' What need

has such a boy for parents or grandparents? Presently he is travelling to
a fashionable boarding-school in his father's private car. At college all

his adolescent curiosities are lavishly gratified. His sister at home
reads the French romances, and by eighteen she, too, knows (in her head

at least) the whole of life, so that she can be perfectly trusted; she
would no more marry a mere half-millionaire just because she loved him

than she would appear twice in the same ball-dress. She and her
ball-dresses are described in the papers precisely as if she were an

animal at a show--which indeed is what she has become; and she's eager to
be thus described, because she and her mother--even if her mother was

once a lady and knew better--are haunted by one perpetual, sickening
fear, the fear of being left out. And if you desire to pay correct

ballroom compliments, you no longer go to her mother and tell her she's
looking every bit as young as her daughter; you go to the daughter and

tell her she's looking every bit as old as her mother, for that's what
she wishes to do, that's what she tries for, what she talks, dresses,

eats, drinks, goes to indecent plays and laughs for. Yes, we manage it
through precocity, and the new-rich American parent has achieved at least

one new thing under the sun, namely, the corruption of the child.
My ladies silentlyconsulted each other's expressions, after which, in

equal silence, their gaze returned to me; but their equally intent
scrutiny was expressive of quite different things. It was with expectancy

that Mrs. Gregory looked at me--she wanted more. Not so Mrs. Weguelin;
she gave me disapproval; it was shadowed in her beautiful, lustrous eyes

that burned dark in her white face with as much fire as that of youth,
yet it was not of youth, being deeply charged with retrospection.

In what, then, had I sinned? For the little lady's next words, coldly
murmured, increased in me an uneasiness, as of sin:--

"You have told us much that we are not accustomed to hear in Kings Port."
"Oh, I haven't begun to tell you!" I exclaimed cheerily.

"You certainly have not told us," said Mrs. Gregory, "how your
'precocity' escapes this divorce degradation."

"Escape it? Those people think it is--well, provincial--not to have been
divorced at least once!"

Mrs. Gregory opened her eyes, but Mrs. Weguelin shut her lips.
I continued: "Even the children, for their own little reasons, like it.

Only last summer, in Newport, a young boy was asked how he enjoyed having
a father and an ex-father."

"Ex-father!" said Mrs. Gregory. "Vice-father is what I should call him."
"Maria!" murmured Mrs. Weguelin, "how can you jest upon such topics?"

"I am far from jesting, Julia. Well, young gentleman, and what answer did
this precious Newport child make?"

"He said (if you will pardon my giving you his little sentiment in his
own quite expressive idiom), 'Me for two fathers! Double money birthdays

and Christmases. See?' That was how he saw divorce."
Once again my ladies consulted each other's expressions; we moved along

High Walk in such silence that I heard the stiff little rustle which the
palmettos were making across the street; even these trees, you might have

supposed, were whispering together over the horrors that I had recited in
their decorous presence.

It was Mrs. Gregory who next spoke. "I can translate that last boy's
language, but what did the other boy mean about a 'raid on Steel

Preferred'--if I've got the jargon right?"
While I translated this for her, I felt again the disapproval in Mrs.

Weguelin's dark eyes; and my sins--for they were twofold--were presently
made clear to me by this lady.

"Are such subjects as--as stocks" (she softly cloaked this word in scorn
immeasurable)--"are such subjects mentioned in your good society at the

North?"
I laughed heartily. "Everything's mentioned!"

The lady paused over my reply. "I am afraid you must feel us to be very
old-fashioned in, Kings Port," she then said.

"But I rejoice in it!"
She ignored my not wholly dexterous compliment. "And some subjects," she

pursued, "seem to us so grave that if we permit ourselves to speak of
them at all we cannot speak of them lightly."

No, they couldn't speak of them lightly! Here, then, stood my two sins
revealed; everything I had imparted, and also my tone of imparting it,

had displeased Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, not with the thing, but with
me. I had transgressed her sound old American code of good manners, a

code slightly pompous no doubt, but one in which no familiarity was
allowed to breed contempt. To her good taste, there were things in the

world which had, apparently, to exist, but which one banished from
drawing-room discussion as one conceals from sight the kitchen and

outhouses; one dealt with them only when necessity compelled, and never
in small-talk; and here had I been, so to speak, small-talking them in

that glib, modern, irresponsible cadence with which our brazen age rings
and clatters like the beating of triangles and gongs. Not triangles and

gongs, but rather strings and flutes, had been the music to which Kings
Port society had attuned its measured voice.

I saw it all, and even saw that my own dramatic sense of Mrs. Weguelin's