"But if you will stop--" cried Margaret. "Now, Helen,
how stupid you've been!"

"Whatever have I done?"

"Don't you see that you've frightened him away? I meant
him to stop to tea. You oughtn't to talk about stealing or
holes in an umbrella. I saw his nice eyes getting so
miserable. No, it's not a bit of good now." For Helen had
darted out into the street, shouting, "Oh, do stop!"

"I dare say it is all for the best," opined Mrs. Munt.
"We know nothing about the young man, Margaret, and your
drawing-room is full of very tempting little things."

But Helen cried: "Aunt Juley, how can you! You make me
more and more ashamed. I'd rather he HAD been a thief and
taken all the apostle spoons than that I--Well, I must shut
the front-door, I suppose. One more failure for Helen."

"Yes, I think the apostle spoons could have gone as
rent," said Margaret. Seeing that her aunt did not
understand, she added: "You remember 'rent.' It was one of
father's words--Rent to the ideal, to his own faith in human
nature. You remember how he would trust strangers, and if
they fooled him he would say, 'It's better to be fooled than
to be suspicious'--that the confidence trick is the work of
man, but the want-of-confidence-trick is the work of the devil."