new blood, if not young blood, that Newton was infusing into our body,
which had grown anaemic on Wanhope's psychology and Rulledge's romance;
or, anyway, it was a change.

Newton now began by saying abruptly, in a fashion he had, "We used to
hear a good deal in Boston about your Easter Parade here in New York. Do
you still keep it up?"

No one else answering, Minver replied, presently, "I believe it is still
going on. I understand that it's composed mostly of milliners out to
see one another's new hats, and generous Jewesses who are willing to
contribute the 'dark and bright' of the beauty in which they walk to the
observance of an alien faith. It's rather astonishing how the synagogue
takes to the feasts of the church. If it were not for that, I don't know
what would become of Christmas."

"What do you mean by their walking in beauty?" Rulledge asked over his
shoulder.

"I shall never have the measure of your ignorance, Rulledge. You don't
even know Byron's lines on Hebrew loveliness?

"'She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes.'"

"Pretty good," Rulledge assented. "And they _are_ splendid, sometimes.
But what has the Easter Parade got to do with it?" he asked Newton.

"Oh, only what everything has with everything else. I was thinking of
Easter-time long ago and far away, and naturally I thought of Easter now
and here. I saw your Parade once, and it seemed to me one of the great
social spectacles. But you can't keep anything in New York, if it's
good; if it's bad, you can."

"You come from Boston, I think you said, Mr. Newton," Minver breathed
blandly through his smoke.

"Oh, I'm not a _real_ Bostonian," our guest replied. "I'm not abusing
you on behalf of a city that I'm a native proprietor of. If I were, I
shouldn't perhaps make your decadent Easter Parade my point of attack,
though I think it's a pity to let it spoil. I came from a part of the
country where we used to make a great deal of Easter, when we were boys,
at least so far as eggs went. I don't know whether the grown people
observed the day then, and I don't know whether the boys keep it now; I
haven't been back at Easter-time for several generations. But when I was
a boy it was a serious thing. In that soft Southwestern latitude the
grass had pretty well greened up by Easter, even when it came in March,
and grass co