“Where in the world did you find it?” she asked, meaning the shawl.
“It was where you left it—on the sofa, in the side parlor. I had to take my life in my hand when I crossed among all those waltzers in there. There must have been as many as three couples on the floor. Poor girls! I pity them, off at these places. The fellows in town have a good deal better time. They’ve got their clubs, and they’ve got the theatre, and when the weather gets too much for them they can run off down to the shore for the night. The places anywhere within an hour’s ride are full of fellows. The girls don’t have to dance with one another there, or with little boys. Of course, that’s all right if they like it better.” He laughed at his wife, and winked at me, and smoked swiftly, in emphasis of his irony.
“Then the young gentlemen whom the young ladies here usually meet in society are all at work in the cities?” the Altrurian asked him, rather needlessly, as I had already said so.
“Yes, those who are not out West, growing up with the country, except, of course, the fellows who have inherited a fortune. They’re mostly off on yachts.”
“But why do your young men go West to grow up with the country?” pursued my friend.
“Because the East is grown up. They have got to hustle, and the West is the place to hustle. To make money,” added Makely, in response to a puzzled glance of the Altrurian.
“Sometimes,” said his wife, “I almost hate the name of money.”
“Well, so long as you don’t hate the thing, Peggy.”
“Oh, we must have it, I suppose,” she sighed. “They used to say about the girls who grew into old maids just after the Rebellion that they had lost their chance in the war for the Union. I think quite as many lose their chance now in the war for the dollar.”
“Mars hath slain his thousands, but Mammon hath slain his tens of thousands,” I suggested, lightly; we all like to recognize the facts, so long as we are not expected to do anything about them; then, we deny them.