"I am afraid
Harold won't pass," observed Sabina sadly. "His last coach was such a
muff, but the man he has got now seems a good old sort. Harold can
get on with him comfortably."

"Well, what do you think of the girls?" asked Edna, when she and Bessie
were left alone at the close of the afternoon.

"I think they are very nice, Florence especially, but it is such a pity
that they talk slang; it seems to spoil them, somehow."

"I agree with you that it is bad style, but, you see, they have learned
it from their brothers."

Bad style, that was all. Bessie's gentle-looking mouth closed firmly
with the expression it always wore when politeness forbade her to air
her true opinions, but in her own heart she was saying:

"Bad style. That is how worldly minded people talk. That is how they
palliate these sins against good taste and propriety. I like these
girls; they are genuine, somehow; but I suppose our bringing up has made
us old-fashioned, for I seemed to shrink inwardly every time they opened
their lips. Surely it must be wrong to lose all feminine refinement in
one's language. There were no young men here, happily, to hear them; but
if there had been, they would have expressed themselves in the same
manner. That is what I cannot understand, now girls can lay aside their
dignity and borrow masculine fashions. What a little lady Christine
would have seemed beside them! Chrissy has such pretty manners."

The dinner hour passed more pleasantly than on the previous evening.
Richard talked more, and seemed tolerably at his ease. He followed them
into the drawing-room afterward, and asked his sister to sing, but, to
Bessie's vexation, Edna declined under the pretext of fatigue, and could
not be induced to open the piano. Bessie felt provoked by her
wilfulness, and she was so sorry to see the cloud on Richard's face, for
he was passionately fond of music, as he had informed Bessie at
dinner-time, that she ventured to remonstrate with Edna.

"Do sing a little, just to please your brother; he looks so
disappointed, and you know you are not a bit tired." But Edna shook her
head, and her pretty face looked a little hard.

"I do not wish to please him; it is just because he has asked me that I
will not sing a note this evening. I intend to punish Richard for his
rudeness to me. I begged him to stay home for our garden party
to-morrow; but no, he will not give up his stupid cricket. He says he is
captain, and must be with hi