the cheeks, or assumptions
of the frigid mask, or indicated reserve-cajoleries. Neither ignorantly
nor advisedly did she play on these or other bewitching strings of her
sex, after the fashion of the stamped innocents, who are the boast
of Englishmen and matrons, and thrill societies with their winsome
ingenuousness; and who sometimes when unguarded meet an artful
serenader, that is a cloaked bandit, and is provoked by their
performances, and knows anthropologically the nature behind the devious
show; a sciential rascal; as little to be excluded from our modern
circles as Eve's own old deuce from Eden's garden whereupon, opportunity
inviting, both the fool and the cunning, the pure donkey princess of
insular eulogy, and the sham one, are in a perilous pass.

Damsels of the swiftness of mind of Nesta cannot be ignorant utterly
amid a world where the hints are hourly scattering seed of the inklings;
when vileness is not at work up and down our thoroughfares, proclaiming
its existence with tableau and trumpet. Nataly encountered her girl's
questions, much as one seeks to quiet an enemy. The questions had soon
ceased. Excepting repulsive and rejected details, there is little to
be learnt when a little is known: in populous communities, density only
will keep the little out. Only stupidity will suppose that it can be
done for the livelier young. English mothers forethoughtful for their
girls, have to take choice of how to do battle with a rough-and-tumble
Old England, that lumbers bumping along, craving the precious things,
which can be had but in semblance under the conditions allowed by
laziness to subsist, and so curst of its shifty inconsequence as to
worship in the concrete an hypocrisy it abhors in the abstract. Nataly
could smuggle or confiscate here and there a newspaper; she could not
interdict or withhold every one of them, from a girl ardent to be in
the race on all topics of popular interest: and the newspapers are
occasionally naked savages; the streets are imperfectly garmented even
by day; and we have our stumbling social anecdotist, our spot-mouthed
young man, our eminently silly woman; our slippery one; our slimy one,
the Rahab of Society; not to speak of Mary the maid and the footman
William. A vigilant mother has to contend with these and the like in an
increasing degree. How best?

There is a method: one that Colney Durance advocated. The girl's
intelligence and sweet blood invited a trial of it. Since,