“No, you don't starve in parlor-cars and first-class hotels; but if you step out of them you run your chance of seeing those who do, if you're getting on pretty well in the forties. If it's the unhappy who see unhappiness, think what misery must be revealed to people who pass their lives in the really squalid tenement-house streets--I don't mean picturesque avenues like that we passed through.” “But we are not unhappy,” she protested, bringing the talk back to the personal base again, as women must to get any good out of talk. “We're really no unhappier than we were when we were young.” “We're more serious.” “Well, I hate it; and I wish you wouldn't be so serious, if that's what it brings us to.” “I will be trivial from this on,” said March. “Shall we go to the Hole in the Ground to-night?” “I am going to Boston.” “It's much the same thing. How do you like that for triviality? It's a little blasphemous, I'll allow.” “It's very silly,” she said. At the hotel they found a letter from the agent who had sent them the permit to see Mrs. Grosvenor Green's apartment. He wrote that she had heard they were pleased with her apartment, and that she thought she could make the terms to suit. She had taken her passage for Europe, and was very anxious to let the flat before she sailed. She would call that evening at seven. “Mrs. Grosvenor Green!” said Mrs. March. “Which of the ten thousand flats is it, Basil?” “The gimcrackery,” he answered. “In the Xenophon, you know.” “Well, she may save herself the trouble. I shall not see her. Or yes--I must. I couldn't go away without seeing what sort of creature could have planned that fly-away flat. She must be a perfect--” “Parachute,” March suggested. “No! anybody so light as that couldn't come down.” “Well, toy balloon.” “Toy balloon will do for the present,” Mrs. March admitted. “But I feel that naught but herself can be her parallel for volatility.”