career; but he appreciated her loyalty to her lifelong home and to all
its belongings and surroundings. He had reason for supposing that this
loyalty would extend to himself; but Jane was wound up to go, and had no
idea of allowing anything to stand in the way of her disposal of the
question in all its bearings.

"I suppose," she went on, inexorably, "that we imagine ourselves to be
'prominent citizens.' Well, we make a mistake if we do. We may have been
ten years ago, but not now. We've just been falling, falling, falling
behind--that's the amount of it. Now, honest, pa, dear, do the papers
ever come to you nowadays to know what you think about political
prospects or to ask your opinion on the last new street-car route
proposed? Or do they send men around for trade statistics who jubilate in
the issue of Jan. one because we sold five thousand more barrels of flour
this year than last? Now, do they?"

Marshall could not escape the justness of this pointed presentation of
new conditions. "We have enough to bother us," he said, with a slow
reluctance, "without reporters coming round."

"There it is," continued Jane. "Yes, and who cares nowadays about the
volume of the lumber trade or the mortality at the stock-yards? Why, just
those people themselves. The fact is, the town has moved to a higher
plane, and we've got to move with it, or else get left. Why, dear me, if
it wasn't for an intellectual daughter who had the gift of language and
who wrote papers and read them at the club, this family would have
scarcely a connection with latter-day society."

"Good for you, Jane," called her brother. "Give me some of them to read."