Now, however, the joke has developed a serious side, as their two characters, though in no wise precocious, have become distinctive. Ian represents the Old, primitive and direct, the "sword of the Lord and Gideon" type, while Richard is the New, the reconciler and peacemaker. * * * * * The various congratulations that the twins were boys, from my standpoint I took as a matter of course, even though I had always heard that boys gave the most worry and girls were referred to among our friends and neighbours as the greatest comforts in a home unless they did something decidedly unusual, fitting into nooks, and often taking up and bearing burdens the brothers left behind. But when many people who had either daughters or nieces of their own, and might be said to be in that mystic ring called "Society," congratulated me pointedly about the boys, I began to ponder about the matter mother-wise. Then, three years ago the New York Colony seized upon the broad acres along the Bluffs, and dotted two miles with the elaborate stone and brick houses they call cottages; not for permanent summer homes (the very rich, the spenders, have no homes), but merely hotels in series. These, for the spring and fall between seasons and week-end parties and golfing, men and girls gay in red and green coats, replaced the wild flowers in the shorn outlying fields. I watched these girls, and, beginning to understand, wondered if I had grown old before my time, or if I were too young to comprehend their point of view, for, to their strange enlightenment I was practically as yet unborn. Lavinia Dorman says caustically that I really belong with her in the middle of the last century, and she, born to what father says was really the best society and privilege of New York life, like his college chum Martin Cortright, is now swept quite aside by the swirl. "Yes, dear child," she insists (how different this use of the word sounds from when the Lady of the Bluffs uses the universal "my dear" impartially to mistress and maid, shopgirl and guest), "you not only belong to the last century, but as far back in it as myself, and I am fifty-five, full measure. "The new idea among the richer and consequently more privileged classes is, that girls are to be fitted not only to go out into the world and shine in different ways unknown to their grandmothers, but to be superior to home, which of necessity unfits them for a return trip if the excursion is unsuccessful. "What with high ideas, high rents, and higher education, the home myth is speedily following Santa Claus out of female education, and, argue as one may, New York is the social pace-maker 'East of the Rockies,' as the free delivery furniture companies advertise. I congratulate you anew that the twins are boys!"