"After mother is asleep
and I am ready to slip out."
"I thought you were safe in New York under the eyes of Ballinger and Geary,
or rather of Mattie and Charlotte. They are such earnest good women, so
interested in charities--"
"Deadly. But you don't know the girls,"
"And I have told mother again and again that she should not permit you to
associate with Aileen Lawton."
"She can't help herself. Aileen is one of us. Besides, mother is devoted to
the Judge."
"But powder! None of us has ever put anything but clean cold water on her
face."
"You'd look a long sight better if you did. Cold cream, too. You
wouldn't have any wrinkles at your age, if you weren't so damn
respectable-aristocratic, you call it. It's just middle class. And as out
of date as speech without slang. As for me, I'd paint my lips as Aileen
does, only I don't like the taste, and they're too red, anyhow. It's much
smarter to make up than not to. Times change. You don't wear hoopskirts
because our magnificent Grandmother Ballinger did. You dress as smartly as
the Burlingame crowd. Why does your soul turn green at make-up? All these
people you look down upon because our families were rich and important in
the fifties are more up-to-date than you are, although I will admit that
none of them has the woman-of-the-world air of the smartest New York women
--not that terribly respectable inner set in New York--Aunt Mattie's and
Aunt Charlotte's--_that_ just revels in looking mid-Victorian.
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