f Light Brigade, like the
Six Hundred?" I asked. "Or is it a sort of governing body like--like
the Council of Three?"

She laughed so much at this, with her charming, velvety laugh, that I
grew quite nervous, for it's embarrassing to have said something funny
when you've meant to be rather intelligent. But soon she took pity on
me. "You perfect love," she said; "that's really too sweet. It deserves
to be put into _Life_, or something. And yet you're not so far wrong,
when one comes to think of it. The Four Hundred _is_ a kind of
governing body; only I believe it's really reduced to Two Hundred now.
They govern New York; and Newport; and Lennox; and Bar Harbour; and
several other places which are considered very nice and important."

"Oh! Are they Republicans or Democrats?" I enquired, sure that I really
was being intelligent at last, for I'd heard Stan say that, in America,
the Republican party was rather like our Conservatives, and the
Democrats like the Liberals; and I'd remembered because I believe I
should be very much interested in politics if only I understood more
about them. But Sally seemed to think that question funny, too.

"They can be either, my poor lamb," she exclaimed; "and they can be
almost anything else they like, if only they're just awfully,
dreadfully rich, and can manage to scrape up a family crest. It used to
be the crest that counted, with the man who invented the Four Hundred;
but since his day, that idea has got buried under heaps and heaps of
gold, and pearls and diamonds; especially pearls. In those places I was
telling you about, you don't exist unless you're in the Four Hundred,
which is now being sifted down to Two Hundred, and will probably be
Seventy-five in a year or two. You may have the bluest blood in America
in your veins; you may be simply _smeared_ with ancestors, but if you
haven't managed to push forward in a clever, indescribable way, neither
they nor you will ever be noticed, and your grey hairs will go down to
the grave in the Wrong Set. _Now_ do you understand why my cousin
Katherine makes narrow eyes for some people, and broad smiles for
others?"

"Ye-es, I suppose I do," I answered. "Only--we are quite different at
home. I haven't been about at all yet, but I know; because some things
are in the air. How did Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox ever have the poor Wrong
Setters for acquaintances, though?"

"Because (she'd kill me if she heard this) she has only lately got into
the R