"My deah," said Sally (I'm to call her "Sally" now; it's been understood between us for some time), "my deah, you're a poor, innocent child, and I reckon you've been brought up in darkness, without even so much as hearing of the Four Hundred." "What are the Four Hundred? Are they a kind of Light Brigade, like the Six Hundred?" I asked. "Or is it a sort of governing body like--like the Council of Three?" She laughed so much at this, with her charming, velvety laugh, that I grew quite nervous, for it's embarrassing to have said something funny when you've meant to be rather intelligent. But soon she took pity on me. "You perfect love," she said; "that's really too sweet. It deserves to be put into _Life_, or something. And yet you're not so far wrong, when one comes to think of it. The Four Hundred _is_ a kind of governing body; only I believe it's really reduced to Two Hundred now. They govern New York; and Newport; and Lennox; and Bar Harbour; and several other places which are considered very nice and important." "Oh! Are they Republicans or Democrats?" I enquired, sure that I really was being intelligent at last, for I'd heard Stan say that, in America, the Republican party was rather like our Conservatives, and the Democrats like the Liberals; and I'd remembered because I believe I should be very much interested in politics if only I understood more about them. But Sally seemed to think that question funny, too. "They can be either, my poor lamb," she exclaimed; "and they can be almost anything else they like, if only they're just awfully, dreadfully rich, and can manage to scrape up a family crest. It used to be the crest that counted, with the man who invented the Four Hundred; but since his day, that idea has got buried under heaps and heaps of gold, and pearls and diamonds; especially pearls. In those places I was telling you about, you don't exist unless you're in the Four Hundred, which is now being sifted down to Two Hundred, and will probably be Seventy-five in a year or two. You may have the bluest blood in America in your veins; you may be simply _smeared_ with ancestors, but if you haven't managed to push forward in a clever, indescribable way, neither they nor you will ever be noticed, and your grey hairs will go down to the grave in the Wrong Set. _Now_ do you understand why my cousin Katherine makes narrow eyes for some people, and broad smiles for others?" "Ye-es, I suppose I do," I answered. "Only--we are quite different at home. I haven't been about at all yet, but I know; because some things are in the air. How did Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox ever have the poor Wrong Setters for acquaintances, though?"