Slowly, but inevitably, the Paysons dropped out of the circle made up of Chicago's rich old families--old, that is, in a city that reckoned a twenty-year building a landmark. The dollar sign was beginning to be the open sesame and this symbol had long been violently erased from the Thrift-Payson escutcheon. To the ladies in landaus with the little screw-jointed sun parasols held stiffly before them, Carrie Payson and Charlotte Thrift still were "Carrie" and "Charlotte dear." They--and later Belle and Lottie--were asked to the big, inclusive crushes pretty regularly once a year. But the small smart dinners that were just coming in; the intimate social gayeties; the clubby affairs, knew them not. "One of the Thrift girls" might mean anyone in the Prairie Avenue household, but it was never anything but a term of respect and meant much to anyone who was native to Chicago. Other Prairie Avenue mansions sent their daughters to local private schools, or to the Eastern finishing schools. Belle and Lottie attended the public grammar school and later Armour Institute for the high school course only. Middle-aged folk said to Lottie, "My, how much like your Aunt Charlotte you do look, child!" They never exclaimed in Belle's presence at the likeness they found in her face. Belle's family resemblance could be plainly traced to one of whom friends did not speak in public. Belle was six years her sister's senior, but Lottie, with her serious brow and her clear, steady eyes, looked almost Belle's age. Though Belle was known as the flighty one there was more real fun in Lottie. In Lottie's bedroom there still hangs a picture of the two of them, framed in passepartout. It was taken--arm in arm--when Lottie was finishing high school and Belle was about to marry Henry Kemp; high pompadours over enormous "rats," the whole edifice surmounted by a life-size _chou_ of ribbon; shirtwaists with broad Gibson tucks that gave them shoulders of a coal-heaver; plaid circular skirts fitting snugly about the hips and flaring out in great bell-shaped width at the hem; and trailing. "What in the world do you keep that comic valentine hanging up for!" Belle always exclaimed when she chanced into Lottie's room in later years. Often and often, during these years, you might have heard Carrie Payson say, with bitterness, "I don't want my girls to have the life I've had. I'll see to it that they don't." "How are you going to do it?" Charlotte would ask, with a curious smile. "I'll stay young with them. And I'll watch for mistakes. I know the world. I ought to. For that matter, I'd as soon they never married." Charlotte would flare into sudden and inexplicable protest. "You let them live their own lives, the way they want to, good or bad. How do you know the way it'll turn out! Nobody knows. Let them live their own lives."