iven evidence of his intellectual
appreciation of these things. He talked to Mrs. Kenton not only as if
they were in every-wise equal, but as if they were of the same age,
almost of the same sex.

Ellen came in, cloaked and hatted, with her delicate face excited in
prospect of the adventure; and her mother saw Bittridge look at her with
more tenderness than she had ever seen in him before. "I'll take good
care of her, Mrs. Kenton," he said, and for the first time she felt
herself relent a little towards him.

A minute after they were gone Lottie bounced into the room, followed by
Boyne.

"Momma!" she shouted, "Ellen isn't going to the theatre with that
fellow?"

"Yes, she is."

"And you let her, momma! Without a chaperon?"

Boyne's face had mirrored the indignation in his sister's, but at
this unprecedented burst of conventionality he forgot their momentary
alliance. "Well, you're a pretty one to talk about chaperons! Walking
all over Tuskingum with fellows at night, and going buggy-riding with
everybody, and out rowing, and here fairly begging Jim Plumpton to come
down to the steamer and see you off again!"

"Shut up!" Lottie violently returned, "or I'll tell momma how you've
been behaving with Rita Plumpton yourself."

"Well, tell!" Boyne defied her.

"Oh, it don't matter what a brat of a boy says or does, anyway," said
Lottie. "But I think Ellen is disgracing the family. Everybody in the
hotel is laughing at that wiggy old Mrs. Bittridge, with her wobbly
eyes, and they can see that he's just as green! The Plumptons have been
laughing so about them, and I told them that we had nothing to do with
them at home, and had fairly turned Bittridge out of the house, but he
had impudence enough for anything; and now to find Ellen going off to
the theatre with him alone!"

Lottie began to cry with vexation as she whipped out of the room, and
Boyne, who felt himself drawn to her side again, said, very seriously:
"Well, it ain't the thing in New York, you know, momma; and anybody can
see what a jay Bittridge is. I think it's too bad to let her."

"It isn't for you to criticise your mother, Boyne," said Mrs. Kenton,
but she was more shaken than she would allow. Her own traditions were so
simple that the point of etiquette which her children had urged had not
occurred to her. The question whether Ellen should go with Bittridge at
all being decided, she would, of course, go in New York as she would go
in Tuskingum. No