urn."

"No. True enough," said Mr. Lispenard, nodding with cynical approval.
"Their heads are on so tight there is no turning them; no flexibility
about the young people to-day. The maids are sad enough, but the young
men are worse. Gallants is what we used to call young men, but they
make none to-day that could answer to that term. Gallants! There is
no more courtesy in the land than among the fishes below sea!"

Helen felt inclined to defend her contemporaries, but as she looked at
the old aristocrat before her and contrasted his manner with that of
some of the men in her own set, she did not know quite what to say.
Pelgram's poses seemed cheap and shallow, and Charlie Wilkinson's
free-and-easy carriage might have its virtues, but it certainly was not
marked by dignity, nor did it make particularly for respect.

"They have no reverence for age, none for the great things, the great
days that some of us remember. I confess that I do not like them. I
am quite an old man, and for some years past I have met scarcely a
young man whom my mother would have permitted in her drawing room."

"I know what you mean," Helen said thoughtfully; "and in one way, at
least, I'm afraid you're right. But don't you think that most of the
difference is on the surface, and the young people of to-day are not
really so irreverent as they appear to be? The fashion now is toward
plain, blunt unaffectedness; reverence is a polish of manners which
implies insincerity, and the young men who are really reverent are most
of them ashamed of it and work all the harder to conceal it."

"They are not obliged to overexert themselves," replied Mr. Lispenard.
"But perhaps you are right, my dear. I admit that I am out of sympathy
with the younger generation. They might possess a thousand virtues,
and I could see none of them."

"I'm of the younger generation," said his visitor, with humorous
apologeticalness. "I hope you won't be too hard on it."

"One of its few virtues--that it numbers you among its members," her
host gallantly rejoined. "But they are not all like you--or there
would be fewer bachelors in your town of Boston."

Helen laughed outright.

"No bachelor yet have I unmade," she replied, somewhat enigmatically.

"Indeed?" said Mr. Lispenard. "I may not think very highly of the
young men of to-day, but my opinion of them is not so low as that.
Come, now--I am an old gentleman and the model of reticence--I will
never tell.