them while we've been away," the girl went on. "They won't find in
Utica the same charm; that was my idea. I want a big place, and of
course Utica--!" She broke off as before a complex statement.

"I suppose Utica is inferior--?" Vogelstein seemed to see his way to
suggest.

"Well no, I guess I can't have you call Utica inferior. It isn't
supreme--that's what's the matter with it, and I hate anything
middling," said Pandora Day. She gave a light dry laugh, tossing
back her head a little as she made this declaration. And looking at
her askance in the dusk, as she trod the deck that vaguely swayed,
he recognised something in her air and port that matched such a
pronouncement.

"What's her social position?" he inquired of Mrs. Dangerfield the
next day. "I can't make it out at all--it's so contradictory. She
strikes me as having much cultivation and much spirit. Her
appearance, too, is very neat. Yet her parents are complete little
burghers. That's easily seen."

"Oh, social position," and Mrs. Dangerfield nodded two or three
times portentously. "What big expressions you use! Do you think
everybody in the world has a social position? That's reserved for
an infinitely small majority of mankind. You can't have a social
position at Utica any more than you can have an opera-box. Pandora
hasn't got one; where, if you please, should she have got it? Poor
girl, it isn't fair of you to make her the subject of such questions
as that."