The girl went on. "He had the lower berth, and he gave it up to papa; he's done everything but turn himself out of doors."
"I'm sure he's been very glad," Mrs. March ventured on Burnamy's behalf, but very softly, lest if she breathed upon these budding confidences they should shrink and wither away.
"I always tell papa that there's no country like America for real unselfishness; and if they're all like that, in Chicago!" The girl stopped, and added with a laugh, "But I'm always quarrelling with papa about America."
"We have a daughter living in Chicago," said Mrs. March, alluringly.
But Miss Triscoe refused the bait, either because she had said all she meant, or because she had said all she would, about Chicago, which Mrs. March felt for the present to be one with Burnamy. She gave another of her leaps. "I don't see why people are so anxious to get it like Europe, at home. They say that there was a time when there were no chaperons before hoops, you know." She looked suggestively at Mrs. March, resting one slim hand on the table, and controlling her skirt with the other, as if she were getting ready to rise at any moment. "When they used to sit on their steps."
"It was very pleasant before hoops—in every way," said Mrs. 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?"