estern. I felt sure you weren't a New Yorker, and
I didn't think you were from Boston. You have the Boston earnest
expression, but somehow you're different. You don't mind my analyzing
you, do you? That's a Boston habit by the way. But I'm not from Boston.
I've lived all my life in New Jersey. So we are both strangers in New
York. That is, I'm the same as a stranger, though my father is a cousin
of the Morton Prices. We sent them wedding cards and they called one day
when I was out. I shall return the call and find them out, and that will
be the last move on either side until Gregory does something remarkable.
I'm rather glad I wasn't at home, because it would have been awkward.
They wouldn't have known what to say to me, and they might have felt
that they ought to ask me to dinner, and I don't care to have them ask
me until they're obliged to. Do I shock you running on so about my own
affairs?" Flossy asked, noticing Selma draw herself up sternly.

"Oh no, I like that. I was only thinking that it was very strange of
your cousins. You are as good as they, aren't you?"

"Mercy, no. We both know it, and that's what makes the situation so
awkward. As Christians, they had to call on me, but I really think they
are justified in stopping there. Socially I'm nobody."

"In this country we are all free and equal."

"You're a dear--a delicious dear," retorted Flossy, with a caressing
laugh. "There's something of the sort in the Declaration of
Independence, but, as Gregory says, that was put in as a bluff to
console salesladies. Was everybody equal in Benham, Mrs. Littleton?"

"Practically so," said Selma, with an air of haughtiness, which was
evoked by her recollection of the group of houses on Benham's River
Drive into which she had never been invited. "There were some people who
were richer than others, but that didn't make them better than any one
else."

"Well, in New York it's different. Of course, every body has the same
right to vote or to be elected President of the United States, but
equality ends there. People here are either in society or out of it, and
society itself is divided into sets. There's the conservative
aristocratic set, the smart rapid set, the set which hasn't much money,
but has Knickerbocker or other highly respectable ancestors, the new
millionaire set, the literary set, the intellectual philanthropic set,
and so on, according to one's means or tastes. Each has its little
circle which shades away