s
we often do, at the primitive customs of the lowly, and at their
absurd phrase of "keeping company." It makes a delightful jest. But
beneath it is a greater regard for the rights of a man or woman in
love than one is apt to find higher in the social scale.

With them, to select one another "to keep company," is like an offer
of marriage. To "keep steady company" is the formal announcement of an
engagement, which is a potential marriage. It is the first step
towards matrimony, and is almost as sacred and final.

With their more fortunate and envied sisters in the smart set, an
engagement is the loosest kind of a bond, and neither man nor woman is
safe from the wooing of other men and women until the marriage vows
have been pronounced, and, if your society is very fashionable, not
even then.

So that this society of which I speak would undeniably be called
"good."

Now, of course, all women desire to be loved. She is a very queer
woman who would deny that proposition if asked by the right person,
and I hope he would have sense enough not to believe her if she did. I
do not object to a girl making herself attractive to men in a modest
and maidenly way. On the contrary, I heartily approve of it. But I
would have her select a man who belonged to no other girl, and to know
that nothing but misery can result from the taking of a lover away
from her friend.

It is the fashion for women to deny that this is done. I never could
see why. But possibly they deny it because they are afraid, if they
discuss it, that people will think some girl has lured a lover or two
away from _them_.

People who have witnessed the outward results of this phenomenon also
deny the true cause, on the ground that the robber girl was not clever
enough to have done it. That she simply was more to the man's taste
than the first girl, and so it was all the fault of the man.

Of course, I cannot deny the fickleness of man. But I do say that the
girl hardly lives, no matter how pretty she is, who has not the wit to
get another girl's lover if she wants him. It makes no difference how
young she is, she never makes the mistake of disparaging the first
girl. No woman of the world is less liable to such an error than a
girl who deliberately intends to get another girl's lover.

She begins by gaining her confidence. Very likely she manages to stay
all night with her. (That is the time when you tell everything you
know, just because it is dark, and the