"Now quit it, Belle. I wasn't decorated for the sacrifice, and I'm not going to be 'started on life's journey.' I'm going to wear that tan raw-silk you've all seen a dozen times, and it would be idiotic to help me get into that. Besides, the snappers are almost all off, and nobody but myself knows the trick of pretending they're not."
Jerome smiled. "This generation's a scream, isn't it?"
"I was just thinking—do you suppose it is or that we're just older?"
"No. It is different."
"Yes, I suppose it is." Jean looked about at the young men clearing the furniture to the veranda and the girls grouped about the victrola, choosing records. "But I don't think I ever realized before, quite so clearly, anyhow, that there is a 'this generation.' I always feel as if I am this generation, and children like Tony are the future."
"Delusion, terrible delusion. But, then, you haven't a daughter Alice's age, who discusses her own children even before her marriage."
"Frightful," Jean agreed, pushing away a strange, new wish that she did have a daughter like Alice. "To be menaced with two generations at once—that would take the pep out of me."
Alice was back now, ready to leave. She sent Sidney on an errand, and joined the girls round the victrola.
"They're so terribly afraid of not being reasonable, or being sentimental, and they go to such lengths to prove their independence. Why, Alice would rather die than blush, even if she could accomplish that feat. She would think it was indecent."
"Maybe it is," Jean said lightly, hoping to keep the talk from dropping altogether to the depth of her own seriousness. For this wedding was full of intruding revelations that wearied and saddened her.