eping the language pure. Surely you think it regrettable
that the younger generation should defile and mangle it like that.'

But Helen only laughed, and confessed that she really didn't care what
happened to the language. 'There'll always be plenty of people to talk
it too well,' she said.

Mrs. Pepperell, on her side, had her verdict, and she gave it some days
later when she and her niece were driving to the dressmaker's.

'She is a very nice girl, Miss Buchanan, and clever, too, in her quiet
English way, though startlingly ignorant. Dorothy actually told me that
she had never read any Browning, and thought that Sophocles was
Diogenes, and lived in a tub. But frankly, Althea, I can't say that I
take to her very much.'

Aunt Julia, often irritating to Althea, was never more so than when, as
now, she assumed that her verdicts and opinions were of importance to
her niece. Althea shrank from open combat with anybody, yet she could,
under cover of gentle candour, plant her shafts. She planted one now in
answering: 'I don't think that you would, either of you, take to one
another. Helen's flavour is rather recondite.'

'Recondite, my dear,' said Aunt Julia, who never pretended not to know
when a shaft had been planted. 'I think, everyday _mere de famille_ as I
am, that I am quite capable of appreciating the recondite. Miss
Buchanan's appearance is striking, and she is an independent creature;
but, essentially, she is the most commonplace type of English
girl--well-bred, poor, idle, uneducated, and with no object in life
except to amuse herself and find a husband with money. And under that
air of sleepy indifference she has a very sharp eye to the main chance,
you may take my word for it.'

Althea was very angry, the more so for the distorted truth this judgment
conveyed. 'I'm afraid I shouldn't take your word on any matter
concerning my friend,' she returned; 'and I think, Aunt Julia, that you
forget that it is my friend you are speaking of.'

'My dear, don't lose your temper. I only say it to put you on your
guard. You are so given to idealisation, and you may find yourself
disappointed if you trust to depths that are not there. As to
friendship, don't forget that she is, as yet, the merest acquaintance.'

'One may feel nearer some people in a week than to others after years.'

'As to being near in a week--she doesn't feel near _you_; that is all I
mean. Don't cast your pearls too lavishly.'

Althea made no repl