Because the day was so fine, I had walked downtown. I was going to call on Eva, who lived four blocks away; but it was early, and she might still be at work. And to sit in the sun and gaze at the pleasant pinkish bricks in the row of old Georgian houses on the northern side of the Square was delightful. I was pleased when Mrs. Van Suydam’s maroon brougham came in sight around the corner from Macdougal Street; its colour toned in with the pinkish bricks and with the pale blue sky. Every fine afternoon, at the correct hour for a lady’s airing, Higginson donned his puce livery, mounted the box-seat of the brougham, and drove the bays which had once been spanking from the stable which still fulfilled its original mission on Macdougal Alley. His little eyes looked neither to the right nor to the left; for he ignored the life of the Alley which had once been a mews and was now an artists’ colony. With the laudable end in view of showing the inhabitants that he flouted them, he contrived to get around the sharp turn into Macdougal Street, and around the further curve into Washington Square, with much stamping of hoofs. For Higginson was conservative. He was the worst of snobs: he was a horseman. And he could remember when the smells along Macdougal Alley had been those of horses and harness and not, as now, the stench of gasoline and the emanations of artistic life. He drew up, with a flourish, before the high front steps of the Van Suydam mansion, froze into immobility, and prepared to endure with scorn the jibes of roller-skating and ball-playing roisterers in the Square. I was sure that he shared the opinion of his mistress on the decline of manners and customs. I watched Mrs. Van Suydam come down the steps and give directions over her shoulder to the maid who saw to it that no errant gust of wind should lift from their decent protection of elderly limbs the last petticoats in the city. Although a small woman, she gave the impression of solidity, of standing in the last ditch without acknowledging it to be the last, of fighting for a lost cause and believing it to be the only cause. Her ability lay in an inability to see that her people, inheriting New Amsterdam, had not kept up with New York. She had confidence in herself because if she had ever been crossed she knew how to wait until matters adjusted themselves. All of this showed on her face, which was never serene but which was always composed. She had bent her will to a temporary acceptance of the repugnant. For a moment, she stood looming out at the Square with unseeing eyes. The carriage door slammed. The message of the slam of the door of a horse-drawn carriage differs from that of a motorcar. She was off for the drive which she had made an institution.