"Oh, no. Mother thinks she's the modern woman and that she makes up the younger generation. She doesn't realize that I'm the younger generation. She's really as old-fashioned as any of them. She is superior in a lot of ways, mother is. But she's like all the rest in most. She's been so used all these years to having people exclaim with surprise when she said she had a daughter of sixteen—seventeen—eighteen—that now, when I'm nineteen she still expects people to exclaim over her having a big girl. I'm not a big girl. I'm not even what the cheap novels used to call a 'child-woman.' Mother'll have to wake up to that."
Lottie laughed a little at a sudden recollection. "When I got this hat last week mother went with me."
"She would," sotto voce, from Charley.
"The saleswoman brought a little pile of them—four or five—and I tried them on; but they weren't the thing, quite. And then mother, who was sitting there, watching me, said to the girl: 'Oh, no, those won't do. Show us something more girlish.'"
"There!"
"Yes, but wasn't it kind of sweet? The clerk stared, of course. I heard her giggling about it afterward to one of the other saleswomen. You see, mother thinks I'm still a girl. When I leave the house she often asks me if I have a clean handkerchief."
"Yes, go on, be sentimental about it. That'll help. You've let Grandma dominate your life. That's all right—her wanting to, I mean. That's human nature. The older generation trying to curb the younger. But your letting her do it—that's another thing. That's a crime against your own generation and indicates a weakness in you, not in her. The younger generation has got to rule. Those of us who recognize that and act on it, win. Those who don't go under."
"You're a dreadful child!" exclaimed Lottie. She more than half meant it. "It's horrible to hear you. Where did you learn all this—this ruthlessness?"
"I learned it at school—and out of school. Those are the things we talk about. What did you suppose boys and girls talk about these days!"
"I don't know," Lottie replied, weakly. She thought of the girl of the old Armour Institute days—the girl who used to go bicycling on Saturdays with the boy in the jersey sweater. They had talked about school, and books, and games, and dreams, and even hopes—very diffidently and shyly—but never once about reality or life. If they had perhaps things would have been different for Lottie Payson, she thought now. "Let's go home, Chas."