Edna shivered. She detested slang--continued to detest and avoid it even after she learned that it was fashionable. “Miss Ryper guards her list of pupils as their mothers guard their visiting lists,” said she. “But now she likes Margot. The dear child has been elected to the most exclusive fraternity. Every girl in it has to wear hand-made underclothes and has to have had at least a father, a grandfather, and a great grandfather.” Edna laughed with pride at her own cleverness before she went on. “Margot came to me when she was proposed, and cried as if her little heart would break. She said she didn’t know anything about her grandfather and great grandfather. But I hadn’t forgotten to arrange that. I think of everything.” “Oh, that was easy enough,” said I. “Your grandfather was a tailor and mine was in the grocery business like father.” Edna looked round in terror. “Sh!” she exclaimed. “Servants always listen.” She went to the door--we were in the small upstairs sitting room--opened it suddenly, looked into the hall, closed the door, and returned to a chair nearer the lounge on which I was stretched comfortably smoking. “What’s the matter?” said I. “No one was there,” said she. “Haven’t I told you never to speak of--of those horrible things?” “But Margot----” “Margot doesn’t know. She must _never_ know! Poor child, she is so sensitive, it would make her ill.” I lapsed into gloomy silence. I had not liked the way Edna had been acting about her parents and mine ever since we came to Brooklyn. But I had been busy, and was averse to meddling. “I gave Margot for the benefit of the girls a genealogy I’ve gotten up,” she went on. “You know all genealogies are more or less faked, and I’ve no doubt hers is every bit as genuine as those of half the girls over there. I fixed ours so that it would take a lot of inquiry to expose it. And Margot got into the fraternity.” “Are the hand-made underclothes fake too?” said I. “Oh, no. _They_ had to be genuine. I’ve never let Margot wear any other kind since I learned about those things. There’s nothing that gives a child such a sense of ladylikeness and superiority as to feel she’s dressed right from the skin out.” “Well, school’s a different sort of a place from what it was in our day,” said I. The picture my wife had drawn amused me, but I somehow did not exactly like it. My mind was too little interested in the direction of the things that absorbed Edna for me to be able to put into any sort of shape the thoughts vaguely moving about in the shadows. “I’ll bet,” I went on, “poor Margot doesn’t have as good a time as we had.” “She’d hate that kind of a time,” said Edna. I laughed and laid my hand in her lap. Her hand stole into it. I watched her lovely face--the sweet, dreamy expression. “What are you thinking?” said I softly, hopeful of romance--what _I_ call romance. “I was thinking how low and awful we used to be,” replied she, “and how splendidly we are getting away from it.”