il in my own house.
His mother brought him, and he won't dare to behave here as he does at
their bachelor parties."

"She ought not to have brought him till he had shown some desire to
mend his ways. It is none of my business, I know, but I do wish people
wouldn't be so inconsistent, letting boys go to destruction and then
expecting us girls to receive them like decent people." Rose spoke in
an energetic whisper, but Annabel heard her and exclaimed, as she turned
round with a powder puff in her hand: "My goodness, Rose! What is all
that about going to destruction?"

"She is being strong-minded, and I don't very much blame her in this
case. But it leaves me in a dreadful scrape," said Kitty, supporting her
spirits with a sniff of aromatic vinegar.

"I appeal to you, since you heard me, and there's no one here but
ourselves do you consider young Randal a nice person to know?" And Rose
turned to Annabel and Emma with an anxious eye, for she did not find it
easy to abide by her principles when so doing annoyed friends.

"No, indeed, he's perfectly horrid! Papa says he and Gorham are the
wildest young men he knows, and enough to spoil the whole set. I'm so
glad I've got no brothers," responded Annabel, placidly powdering her
pink arms, quite undeterred by the memory of sundry white streaks left
on sundry coat sleeves.

"I think that sort of scrupulousness is very ill-bred, if you'll excuse
my saying so, Rose. We are not supposed to know anything about fastness,
and wildness, and so on, but to treat every man alike and not be fussy
and prudish," said Emma, settling her many-colored streamers with the
superior air of a woman of the world, aged twenty.

"Ah! But we do know, and if our silence and civility have no effect, we
ought to try something else and not encourage wickedness of any kind. We
needn't scold and preach, but we can refuse to know such people and that
will do some good, for they don't like to be shunned and shut out from
respectable society. Uncle Alec told me not to know that man, and I
won't." Rose spoke with unusual warmth, forgetting that she could not
tell the real reason for her strong prejudice against "that man."

"Well, I know him. I think him very jolly, and I'm engaged to dance
the German with him after supper. He leads quite as well as your cousin
Charlie and is quite as fascinating, some people think," returned Emma,
tossing her head disdainfully, for Prince Charming did not worship at
her s