ed to him and asked how Mathilde had enjoyed what she referred to as
"her first winter."

Mr. Lanley liked to talk about Mathilde. He described, with a little
natural exaggeration, how much she had enjoyed herself and how popular
she had been.

"I hope she hasn't been bitten by any of those modern notions," said
Mrs. Baxter.

Mr. Wilsey broke in.

"Oh, these modern, restless young women!" he said. "They don't seem able
to find their natural contentment in their own homes. My daughter came to
me the other day with a wonderful scheme of working all day long with
charity organizations. I said to her, 'My dear, charity begins at home.'
My wife, Mrs. Baxter, is an old-fashioned housekeeper. She gives out all
supplies used in my house; she knows where the servants are at every
minute of the day, and we have nine. She--"

"Oh, how is dear Mrs. Wilsey?" said Mrs. Baxter, perhaps not eager for
the full list of her activities.

"Well, at present she is in a sanatorium," replied her husband, "from
overwork, just plain overwork."

Mr. Lanley, catching Mrs. Wayne's twinkling eye, could only pray that
she would not point out that a sojourn in a sanatorium was not
complete contentment in the home; but before she had a chance, Mrs.
Baxter had gone on.

"That's so like the modern girl--anything but her obvious duty. She'll
help any one but her mother and work anywhere but in the home. We've had
a very painful case at home lately. One of our most charming young girls
has suddenly developed an absolutely morbid curiosity about the things
that take place in the women's courts. Why, as her poor father said to
me, 'Mrs. Baxter, old as I am, I hear things in those courts so shocking
I have hard work forgetting them; and yet Imogen wants me to let her go
into those courts day after day--'"

"Oh, that's abnormal, almost perverted," said Mr. Wilsey, judicially.
"The women's courts are places where no--" he hesitated a bare instant,
and Mrs. Wayne asked:

"No woman should go?"

"No girl should go."

"Yet many of the girls who come there are under sixteen."

Mr. Wilsey hid a slight annoyance under a manner peculiarly bland.

"Ah, dear lady," he said, "you must forgive my saying that that remark is
a trifle irrelevant."

"Is it?" she asked, meaning him to answer her; but he only looked
benevolently at her, and turned to listen to Mrs. Baxter, who was saying:

"Yes, everywhere we look nowadays we see women rushing into things th