“We are going to live in New York,” replied she.
“But we do live in New York. Brooklyn is part of New York.”
“Legally I suppose it is,” replied she. “But morally and æsthetically, socially, and in every other civilized way, my dear Godfrey, it is part of the backwoods. I can hardly wait to get away.”
“Why, I thought you were happy here!” exclaimed I, marveling, used though I was to her keeping her own counsel strictly about the matters that most interested her. “You’ve certainly acted as if you loved it.”
“I didn’t mind it at first,” conceded she. “But for two or three years I have loathed it, and everybody that lives in it.”
I was amazed at this last sally. “Oh, come now, Edna,” cried I, “you’ve got lots of friends here—lots and lots of them.”
I was thinking of the dozen or so women whom she called and who called her by the first name, women she was with early and late. Women she was daily playing bridge with— Bridge! I have a friend who declares that bridge is ruining the American home, and I see his point, but I think he doesn’t look deep enough. If it weren’t bridge it would be something else. Bridge is a striking example, but only a single example, of the results of feminine folly and idleness that all flow from the same cause. However, let us go back to my talk with Edna. She met my protest in behalf of her friends with a contemptuous:
“I don’t know a soul who isn’t frightfully common.”
“They’re the same sort of people we are.”
“Not the same sort that I am,” declared she proudly. “And not the sort Margot and you are going to be. You’ll see. You don’t know about these things. But fortunately I do.”