down upon me in the saucy might of their rosy girlhood, there was a
gay defiance in Jenny's demand, "Now, papa, how do you like us?"

"Very charming," answered I, surrendering at discretion.

"I told you, girls, that you could convert him to the fashions, if he
should once see you in party trim."

"I beg pardon, my dear; I am not converted to the fashion, but to you,
and that is a point on which I didn't need conversion; but the present
fashions, even so fairly represented as I see them, I humbly confess I
dislike."

"Oh, Mr. Crowfield!"

"Yes, my dears, I do. But then, I protest, I'm not fairly treated. I
think, for a young American girl, who looks as most of my fair friends
do look, to come down with her bright eyes and all her little panoply
of graces upon an old fellow like me, and expect him to like a fashion
merely because _she_ looks well in it, is all sheer nonsense. Why,
girls, if you wore rings in your noses, and bangles on your arms up to
your elbows, if you tied your hair in a war-knot on the top of your
heads like the Sioux Indians, you would still look pretty. The
question isn't, as I view it, whether you look pretty,--for that you
do, and that you will, do what you please and dress how you will. The
question is whether you might not look prettier, whether another style
of dress, and another mode of getting up, would not be far more
becoming. I am one who thinks that it would."

"Now, Mr. Crowfield, you positively are too bad," said Humming-Bird,
whose delicate head was encircled by a sort of crepy cloud of bright
hair, sparkling with gold-dust and spangles, in the midst of which,
just over her forehead, a gorgeous blue butterfly was perched, while a
confused mixture of hairs, gold-powder, spangles, stars, and tinkling
ornaments fell in a sort of cataract down her pretty neck. "You see,
we girls think everything of you; and now we don't like it that you
don't like our fashions."

"Why, my little princess, so long as I like _you_ better than your
fashions, and merely think they are not worthy of you, what's the
harm?"

"Oh yes, to be sure. You sweeten the dose to us babies with that
sugarplum. But really, Mr. Crowfield, why don't you like the
fashions?"

"Because, to my view, they are in great part in false taste, and
injure the beauty of the girls," said I. "They are inappropriate to
their characters, and make them look like a kind and class of women
whom they do not, and I trust never will,