“They never made anything; they’ve just barely got the gumption to hold on to what’s been left to ’em,” she insisted. “As soon as anybody gets money, everybody else sets in to try to get it away from him. They try to get him to give it away; they try to trade him out of it, or to swindle him out of it, or to steal it from him. Everybody wants money and the only way to get it is to get it from somebody else; but for all that, the lowest form of owning money is just inheriting it and sitting down on it; and that’s just about all they know how to do, these New York folks you seem to think so much of!” “But my goodness, grandma!” the troubled young man exclaimed. “I haven’t said——” She cut him off again, for she was far from the conclusion of her discourse; and he got the impression—a correct one—that during his protracted absence she had been bottling within herself the considerable effervescence she now released upon him. She interrupted him with great spirit. “You wait till I’m through, and then you can have your say! I know these New York girls better than you do. You aren’t capable of knowing anything about women anyway, at your age. You’re the kind of young man that idealizes anything that’ll give you half a chance to idealize it. You are! I’ve watched you. What do girls mean to a young man like you? If he doesn’t think they’re good-looking, they don’t mean anything at all to him; it’s just the same as if they weren’t living. But if he thinks some silly little thing is pretty, and she takes special notice of him, that’s enough;—he’s liable to start right in and act like a crazy man over her! She may be the biggest fool, and the meanest one, too, on earth; he thinks she’s got all the goodness and all the wisdom in the universe! You can’t help getting into that state about her; but after you’ve been married awhile the gloss’ll wear off and you’ll begin to notice what you’ve tied yourself up to—to live with till you’re dead!” “But I haven’t told you——” Again she disregarded him. “_I_ know these New York highty-tighties!” she said. “Your grandfather and I went to Saratoga the year after the war, and we spent a month there. We saw a plenty of ’em! They aren’t fit to do anything but flirt and talk French and go to soirées. They’re the most ignorant people I ever met in my life. They’re so ignorant if you asked their opinion of Lalla Rookh they wouldn’t know what you were talking about; but they think you’re funny if you don’t know that some fancy milliner of theirs keeps store on Broadway and not on the Bowery. That’s about the measure of ’em.” “Well, not nowadays, exactly,” her grandson said indulgently. “Some of the ones you saw at Saratoga thirty or forty years ago may have been like that, grandma, but nowadays——”