She began tactfully. "I like this young Mr. Dwight very much, and shall ask
him down, as mother desires it. But I hope, darling, that you will follow
my example and not marry until you have had four years of society, in other
words have seen something of the world--"

"California is not the world."

"Society, in other words human nature, is everywhere much alike. As you
know, I spent a year in England when I was a young lady, and was presented
at court--by Lady Barnstable, who was Lee Tarlton, one of us. It was
merely San Francisco on a large scale, with titles, and greater and older
houses and parks, and more jewels, and more arrogance, and everything much
grander, of course. And they talked politics a great deal, which bored
me as I am sure they would bore you. The beauty of our society is its
simplicity and lack of arrogance--consciousness of birth or of wealth.
Even the more recent members of society, who owe their position to their
fortunes, have a simplicity and kindness quite unknown in New York. Eastern
people always remark it. And yet, owing to their constant visits to the
East and to Europe, they know all of the world there is to know."

"So do the young men, I suppose! I never heard of their doing much
traveling--"

"I should call them remarkably sophisticated young men. But the point is,
darling, that if you wait as long as I did you will discover that the men
who attract a girl in her first season would bore her to extinction in her
fourth."

"You mean after I've had all the bloom rubbed off, and men are forgetting