“No, really. There ought to be some men among us--men without morrows. Now, why don't you and my husband set an example to your sex? Why don't you relax your severe sense of duty? Why need you insist upon being at your offices every morning at nine? Why don't you fling off these habits of lifelong industry, and be gracefully indolent in the interest of the higher civilisation?” Bromfield Corey looked round at her with a smile of relish for her satire. Her husband was a notoriously lazy man, who had chosen to live restrictedly upon an inherited property rather than increase it by the smallest exertion. “Do you think we could get Andy Pasmer to join us?” “No, I can't encourage you with that idea. You must get on without Mr. Pasmer; he's going back to Europe with his son-in-law.” “Do you mean that their girl's married?” “No-engaged. It's just out.” “Well, I must say Mrs. Pasmer has made use of her time.” He too liked to imply that it was all an effect of her manoeuvring, and that the young people had nothing to do with it; this survival from European fiction dies hard. “Who is the young man?” Mrs. Brinkley gave him an account of Dan Mavering as she had seen him at Campobello, and of his family as she just heard of them. “Mr. Munt was telling me about them as you came up.” “Why, was that John Munt?” “Yes; didn't you know him?” “No,” said Corey sadly. “I don't know anybody nowadays. I seem to be going to pieces every way. I don't call sixty-nine such a very great age.” “Not at all!” cried Mrs. Brinkley. “I'm fifty-four myself, and Brinkley's sixty.” “But I feel a thousand years old. I don't see people, and when I do I don't know 'em. My head's in a cloud.” He let it hang heavily; then he lifted it, and said: “He's a nice, comfortable fellow, Munt is. Why didn't he stop and talk a bit?” “Well, Munt's modest, you know; and I suppose he thought he might be the third that makes company a crowd. Besides, nobody stops and talks a bit at these things. They're afraid of boring or being bored.” “Yes, they're all in as unnatural a mood as if they were posing for a photograph. I wonder who invented this sort of thing? Do you know,” said the old man, “that I think it's rather worse with us than with any other people? We're a simple, sincere folk, domestic in our instincts, not gregarious or frivolous in any way; and when we're wrenched away from our firesides, and packed in our best clothes into Jane's gilded saloons, we feel vindictive; we feel wicked. When the Boston being abandons himself--or herself--to fashion, she suffers a depravation into something quite lurid. She has a bad conscience, and she hardens her heart with talk that's tremendously cynical. It's amusing,” said Corey, staring round him purblindly at the groups and files of people surging and eddying past the corner where he sat with Mrs. Brinkley.