sary for his full enjoyment of the evening. If the Quaker
himself expected much of that gilding of which he had spoken he was
certainly disappointed. The garniture of Hendon Hall had always been
simple, and now had assumed less even of aristocratic finery than it
used to show when prepared for the use of the Marchioness. "I'm glad
you've come in time," said he, "because you can get comfortably warm
before dinner." Then he fluttered about round Mrs. Roden, paying her
attention much rather than Marion Fay,--still with some guile, as
knowing that he might thus best prepare for the coming of future good
things. "I suppose you found it awfully cold," he said.

"I do not know that we were awed, my lord," said the Quaker. "But the
winter has certainly set in with some severity."

"Oh, father!" said Marion, rebuking him.

"Everything is awful now," said Hampstead, laughing. "Of course the
word is absurd, but one gets in the way of using it because other
people do."

"Nay, my lord, I crave pardon if I seemed to criticize thy language.
Being somewhat used to a sterner manner of speaking, I took the word
in its stricter sense."

"It is but slang from a girl's school, after all," said Roden.

"Now, Master George, I am not going to bear correction from you,"
said Hampstead, "though I put up with it from your elders. Miss Fay,
when you were at school did they talk slang?"

"Where I was at school, Lord Hampstead," Marion answered, "we were
kept in strict leading-strings. Fancy, father, what Miss Watson would
have said if we had used any word in a sense not used in a
dictionary."

"Miss Watson was a sensible woman, my dear, and understood well,
and performed faithfully, the duties which she had undertaken. I do
not know that as much can be said of all those who keep fashionable
seminaries for young ladies at the West End."

"Miss Watson had a red face, and a big cap, and spectacles;--had she
not?" said Hampstead, appealing to Marion Fay.

"Miss Watson," said Mrs. Roden, "whom I remember to have seen once
when Marion was at school with her, was a very little woman, with
bright eyes, who wore her own hair, and always looked as though she
had come out of a bandbox."

"She was absolutely true to her ideas of life, as a Quaker should
be," said Mr. Fay, "and I only hope that Marion will follow her
example. As to language, it is, I think, convenient that to a certain
extent our mode of speech should consort with our mode of livi