March. "I
was young, then; and I lived in Boston, where I suppose it was always
simpler than in New York. I used to sit on our steps. It was delightful
for girls--the freedom."

"I wish I had lived before hoops," said Miss Triscoe.

"Well, there must be places where it's before hoops yet: Seattle, and
Portland, Oregon, for all I know," Mrs. March suggested. "And there must
be people in that epoch everywhere."

"Like that young lady who twists and turns?" said Miss Triscoe, giving
first one side of her face and then the other. "They have a good time. I
suppose if Europe came to us in one way it had to come in another. If it
came in galleries and all that sort of thing, it had to come in
chaperons. You'll think I'm a great extremist, Mrs. March; but sometimes
I wish there was more America instead of less. I don't believe it's as
bad as people say. Does Mr. March," she asked, taking hold of the chair
with one hand, to secure her footing from any caprice of the sea, while
she gathered her skirt more firmly into the other, as she rose, "does he
think that America is going--all wrong?"

"All wrong? How?"

"Oh, in politics, don't you know. And government, and all that. And
bribing. And the lower classes having everything their own way. And the
horrid newspapers. And everything getting so expensive; and no regard for
family, or anything of that kind."

Mrs. March thought she saw what Miss Triscoe meant, but she answered,
still cautiously, "I don't believe he does always. Though there are times
when he is very much disgusted. Then he says that he is getting too
old--and we always quarrel about that--to see things as they really are.
He says that if the world had been going the way that people over fifty
have always thought it was going, it would have gone to smash in the time
of the anthropoidal apes."

"Oh, yes: Darwin," said Miss Triscoe, vaguely. "Well, I'm glad he doesn't
give it up. I didn't know but I was holding out just because I had argued
so much, and was doing it out of--opposition. Goodnight!" She called her
salutation gayly over her shoulder, and Mrs. March watched her gliding
out of the saloon with a graceful tilt to humor the slight roll of the
ship, and a little lurch to correct it, once or twice, and wondered if
Burnamy was afraid of her; it seemed to her that if she were a young man
she should not be afraid of Miss Triscoe.

The next morning, just after she had arranged herself in her steamer
chair,