"H'm!" said Mr. Mavering, frowning. "I think I should be tempted to box
my boy's ears if I saw him paying another man's wife attention."

"What a Roman father!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, greatly amused, and letting
herself go a little further yet. She said to herself that she really must
find out who this remarkable Mr. Mavering was, and she cast her eye over
the hall for some glimpse of the absent Munt, whose arm she meant to
take, and whose ear she meant to fill with questions. But she did not see
him, and something else suggested itself. "He probably wouldn't let you
see him, or if he did, you wouldn't know it."

"How not know it?"

Mrs. Primer did not answer. "One hears such dreadful things. What do you
say--or you'll think I'm a terrible gossip--"

"Oh no;" said Mr: Mavering, impatient for the dreadful thing, whatever it
was.

Mrs. Primer resumed: "--to the young married women meeting last winter
just after a lot of pretty girls had came out, and magnanimously
resolving to give the Buds a chance in society?"

"The Buds?"

"Yes, the Rose-buds--the debutantes; it's an odious little word, but
everybody uses it. Don't you think that's a strange state of things for
America? But I can't believe all those things," said Mrs. Pasmer,
flinging off the shadow of this lurid social condition. "Isn't this a