a lady who
regards the prevailing mode of dress and a _heartless_ woman, be she
attired in the latest style, or in the costume of the times of good
queen Bess. A fashionably dressed woman need not, of necessity, be
heartless."

"O no, of course not; nor did I mean to say so. But it is very
certain, to my mind, that any one who follows the fashions cannot be
very sound in the head. And where there is not much head, it seems
to me there is never a superabundance of heart."

"Quite a philosopher!"

"You needn't try to beat me off by ridicule, Mary. I am in earnest."

"What about?"

"In condemning this blind slavery to fashion."

"You follow the fashions."

"No, Mary, I do not."

"Your looks very much belie you, then."

"Mary!"

"Nonsense! Don't look so grave. What I say is true. You follow the
fashion as much as I do."

"I am sure I never examined a plate of fashions in my life."

"If you have not, your tailor has for you, many a time."

"I don't believe a word of it. I don't have my clothes cut in the
height of the fashion. They are made plain and comfortable. There is
nothing about them that is put on merely because it is fashionable."

"I beg your pardon, sir."

"It is a fact."

"Why do you have your lappels made to roll three button-holes
instead of two. There's father's old coat, made, I don't know when,
that roll but two."

"Because, I suppose, its now the fash--"

"Ah, exactly! Didn't I get you there nicely?"

"No, but Mary, that's the tailor's business, not mine."

"Of course,--you trust to him to make you clothes according to the
fashion, while I choose to see if the fashions are just such as
suits my stature, shape, and complexion, that I may adopt them
fully, or deviate from them in a just and rational manner. So there
is this difference between us; you follow the fashions blindly, and
I with judgment and discrimination!"

"Indeed, Mary, you are too bad."

"Do I speak anything but the truth?"

"I should be very sorry, indeed, if your deductions were true in
regard to my following the fashions so blindly, if indeed at all."

"But don't you follow them?"

"I never think about them."

"If you don't, somehow or other, you manage to be always about even
with the prevailing modes. I don't see any difference between your
dress and that of other young men."

"I don't care a fig for the fashions, Mary!" rejoined Henry,
speaking with some warmth.

"So you say."

"And so I mean."