or dancing much," says Hetty. "What is the use of
standing up opposite a stupid man, and dancing down a room with him?"

"Merci du compliment!" says Mr. Warrington.

"I don't say that you are stupid--that is--that is, I--I only meant
country dances," says Hetty, biting her lips, as she caught her sister's
eye. She remembered she had said Harry was stupid, and Theo's droll
humorous glance was her only reminder.

But with this Miss Hetty chose to be as angry as if it had been quite a
cruel rebuke. "I hate dancing--there--I own it," she says, with a toss
of her head.

"Nay, you used to like it well enough, child!!" interposes her mother.

"That was when she was a child: don't you see she is grown up to be an
old woman?" remarks Hetty's father. "Or perhaps Miss Hester has got the
gout?"

"Fiddle!" says Hester, snappishly, drubbing with her little feet.

"What's a dance without a fiddle?" says imperturbed papa.

Darkness has come over Harry Warrington's face. "I come to try my best,
and give them pleasure and a dance," he thinks, "and the little thing
tells me she hates dancing. We don't practise kindness, or acknowledge
hospitality so in our country. No--nor speak to our parents so,
neither." I am afraid, in this particular usages have changed in the
United States during the last hundred years, and that the young folks
there are considerably Hettified.

Not content with this, Miss Hester must proceed to make such fun of
all the company at the Wells, and especially of Harry's own immediate
pursuits and companions, that the honest lad was still further pained at
her behaviour; and, when he saw Mrs. Lambert alone, asked how or in
what he had again offended, that Hester was so angry with him? The kind
matron felt more than ever well disposed towards the boy, after her
daughter's conduct to him. She would have liked to tell the secret
which Hester hid so fiercely. Theo, too, remonstrated with her sister in
private; but Hester would not listen to the subject, and was as angry in
her bedroom, when the girls were alone, as she had been in the parlour
before her mother's company. "Suppose he hates me?" says she. "I expect
he will. I hate myself, I do, and scorn myself for being such an idiot.
How ought he to do otherwise than hate me? Didn't I abuse him, call him
goose, all sorts of names? And know he is not clever all the time. I
know I have better wits than he has. It is only because he is tall, and
has blue eyes, and a